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CHILDREN’S 

NATURE 


STORY- •:• 
SERM ON S 















Class 

Book. 



Copyright N?___ 

COEXRIGHT DEPOSm 


I 






















CHILDREN’S NATURE STORY- 
SERMONS 


WORKS BY 

HUGH T. KERR, D.D. 

4 Volumes, Each $1.25 

Children’s Gospel Story-Sermons. 

“ These are Story-Sermons. They are not 
stories and must not be so judged. Some¬ 
times they ‘ tag a moral to a tale/ They are 
not sermons and must not be tested by the 
one, two, three, method of the classroom or 
the pulpit. Simplicity has been aimed at but 
the great central doctrines of the Christian 
faith have not been neglected. 

Children’s Missionary-Story-Sermons. 

Told in simple, yet engrossing fashion, 
the story of missionary heroism becomes in 
Dr. Kerr’s capable hands a realm of veritable 
romance in which deeds of knightly valor 
are done in the name of the great king. 

Children’s Story-Sermons. 

' “ The story sermons are so attractive, so 
simple, so full of action, and interest and 
incident, that they are not only good to 
read aloud, but the child will be glad to 
read them again and again by himself.”— 
Sunday School Times. 

The Highway of Life and Other 
Sermons. 

“ There is a popular impression that the 
minister who knows how to tell stories to 
children is not the man who knows how to 
preach to grown-ups. This volume will con¬ 
tradict that impression. They are clear in 
outline, forceful in thought, and wholesome 
in tone .”—Record Christian Work. 





Childrens Nature 
Story-Sermons 




HUGH T. KERR, D.D., 


Pastor , Shadyside Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
Author oj “ Children's Missionary-Story Sermons” 

* ‘ Children V Story-Sermons , ” “ Children V 
Gospel-Story Sermons, ” etc. 



New York Chicago 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 











Copyright, 1923, by 

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



Printed in the United States of America 



New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London : 21 Paternoster Square 

Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 


DEC -5 ’23 

©C 1 A 766174 


^9 jlc. 




i 

r 




* 



TO 

Mr. and Mrs. Finley H. Lloyd 

WITH PLEASANT MEMORIES OF 

“elfin camp” 


4 

























FOREWORD. 


P ASSING north through the Canadian vaca¬ 
tion country, one comes to a sort of height 
of land where the waters that flow east into 
the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario cease to flow, 
and one sees the western current begin and later 
enjoys those fine rivers that empty into the Geor¬ 
gian Bay. For a while the traveller pauses to 
think of the strangeness of the situation, but as 
he travels on he remembers that the waters of 
the Bay, the River, and the Lake very soon min¬ 
gle and become one in their outward and onward 
flow to the great sea. 

And so all truth finds its way out into life and 
not the least of the pleasures of the ministry is 
to discover that truth embodied in a tale to please 
the children overflows to the refreshment and en¬ 
richment of the children’s friends. The imagina¬ 
tion is the highest faculty we have and in that 
magic world heaven comes down our souls to 
meet. 

Jesus never failed to appeal to the imagination, 
and the best of all nature story-sermons are the 
story-sermons of the Gospels. He understood 
children and He knew nature like a book. The 
wild flowers and the birds, the sunrise and the 
sunset, the winds and the waves, the green grass, 
7 


FOREWORD 


8 

and the golden grain were all his familiar friends, 
and nearly all his parables are nature story-ser¬ 
mons. 

If there is any virtue and if there is any praise 
in this attempt at nature story-sermon telling, the 
credit must be given to the children themselves, 
and their generous appreciation. I must also, in 
all honesty say that I owe much to Sir J. Arthur 
Thomson's “The Outline of Science," and any 
reader of those suggestive volumes will easily 
detect the indebtedness. 


‘Elfin Camp’ 


H. T. K. 


t 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 


I. 

The Lord God is a Sun 

. 

. 


13 

2. 

Counting the Stars 


. 


16 

3 - 

Dust. 


. 


20 

4 - 

A Christmas Story-Sermon 


. 


23 

5 - 

A Dead World . 


. 


27 

6. 

The Greatest Cradle in the 

World 

3 i 

7 - 

What the 3 ells Say 


. 


34 

8. 

The Unseen Comrade . 


. 


37 

9 * 

The Test .... 


. 


40 

IO. 

Camouflage 


. 


43 

ii. 

Living Grain 


. 


46 

12. 

The Home of the Wheat 


. 


49 

13 - 

Shooting Stars 


. 


51 

14. 

Flowers and Prayers 


. 


54 

15. 

The Greatest Mill in the 

World 


57 

16. 

Habits. 


. 


61 

i 7 - 

Try—Keep Trying . 


• 


64 

18. 

The Worst Parasite 




67 

19. 

Be Somebody 


• 


70 

20. 

The Lace and the Shoe 


• 


74 

21. 

Making Black White . 


• 


78 

22. 

A Friendly World . 


. 


81 


9 




IO 

CONTENTS 




CHAPTER 



PAGE 

23* 

For Sale .... 



84 

24. 

The Worst Thing in the 

World 


87 

25. 

The Easiest Thing in the World 


90 

26. 

Dead Spots .... 



93 

27. 

Cats and Clover 



98 

28. 

The Tide .... 



101 

29. 

The Water Wheel . 



104 

30 - 

Finding the Way . 



107 

3 i- 

Afraid of the Zeal' 



no 

32 . 

The Hidden Spring 



114 

33 - 

An Easter Story-Sermon 



11 7 

34 - 

The Ravens 



120 

35 - 

Old Folks and Trees 



123 

36. 

A Child Goes to Church 



127 

37 - 

Pharaoh’s Perfume 



130 

38 . 

The Bramble King . 



133 

39 - 

A Book in a Tree . 



137 

40. 

The Song the Sea Sings 



140 

4 i. 

A Tree that Told a Lie 



143 

42. 

A White Stone 



147 

43 - 

The Most Beautiful Thing in the 



World .... 



151 

44 - 

Lost !. 



155 

45 . 

Say It with Flowers 



158 

46. 

The Shandaken Tunnel 



161 

47 - 

Sowing and Reaping 



165 

48. 

Little Brothers and Sisters 


168 








CONTENTS 


ii 


CHAPTER PAGE 

49. Work!. 172 

50. Safety First!. 175 

51. The Wasps’ Nest.179 

52. The Sweetest Thing in the World . 184 

























































I 

THE LORD GOD IS A SUN 

“The Lord God is a sun. ’ —Ps. 84: n 


T HE Bible tells us that God is like the sun. 
“The Lord God is a sun.” If you take 
the Hymnal, and look among the hymns 
you love you will find the thought repeated, again 
and again, “Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear,” 
“As the sun doth daily rise,” “Sun of our life, 
thy quickening ray,” “Great sun of righteousness, 
arise.” The sun is so full of light, so bright, so 
warm, so beautiful, it is little wonder the sun re¬ 
minds us of God. 

How far away the sun is! Once I saw an au¬ 
tomobile travel 100 miles an hour. It was out at 
Indianapolis on the great speedway. No! I was 
not at the races. I was at the General Assembly. 
Now, if you can imagine that automobile, not go¬ 
ing around in a circle but travelling straight on 
and on, going day and night, every day, Satur¬ 
day afternoons and Sundays, going on and on, 100 
miles an hour for more than 100 years, it would 
arrive at last at the sun. 

How great is the sun! It would take more than 
a hundred worlds as* big as ours to make one sun. 
And how great is God. He made the sun and all 
the stars. There is nothing in the world so great 
13 


14 


THE LORD GOD IS A SUN 


as God. “To whom then will ye liken me, that 
I should be equal to him? saith the Holy One. 
Lift up your eyes on high, and see who hath cre¬ 
ated these, that bringeth out their host by num¬ 
ber ; he calleth them all by name; by the greatness 
of his might, and for that he is strong in power, 
not one is lacking.’’ 

How bright the sun is! It scatters the night 
and chases away the darkness. How bright and 
beautiful God is! In him is light. The sun sends 
out great flames of light reaching 500,000 miles 
high, and the light of the sun warms this cold 
world of ours. They tell us there are “spots” in 
the sun, great dark spots, thousands of miles 
across, but there is no shadow of darkness about 
God. 


“Our midnight is Thy smile withdrawn; 

Our noontide is Thy gracious dawn; 

Our rainbow arch, Thy mercy’s sign; 

All, save the clouds of sin, are Thine.” 

How near the sun is! We think it is far 
away, millions of miles away, and yet the sun 
is here, at our side, shining, among the flowers, 
in our homes, in the faces of little children, in 
the eyes of those we love. The sun is so near 
you can almost hold it in your hand and look 
at it. We know the sun. We know what it 
is. We know what is in it. We know there is 
iron and copper and zinc and soda and magnesia 
in the sun. How do we know that ? Because the 
sun comes right down and kisses the flowers and 
the faces of little children, and wise men take a 


THE LORD GOD IS A SUN 15 

sunbeam and make it tell them its wonderful se¬ 
crets. How near God is and how good He is. He 
comes to us in Jesus, the light of the world, and 
Jesus tells us all we know about God. 

There is an old, old story in an old, old book 
called the Koran, that tells how away back in the 
beginning of history Abraham found the true 
God. And this is the story. One night in his 
far away heathen home Abraham was sitting 
watching the darkness drift down from the hills. 
As he watched he saw a star away behind the hills. 
He said, “This is my Lord. He is so bright, so 
beautiful.” Then he watched and waited, and 
the moon came up, and he said, “This is my Lord.” 
Through the long, dark night he watched and as 
the moon grew brighter and brighter he said, 
“Verily, I will follow my Lord in the right way.” 
But as he watched the East was filled with glory 
and the great sun came up, and he said, “This is 
my Lord. How great and wonderful he is! The 
sun is greater than earth, or star, or moon. 
Through the long day he watched and in the eve¬ 
ning the great sun went down behind a dark cloud, 
and he said, “Oh, my soul, I am done with these 
things. I turn my face from star and moon and 
sun to Him who hath made them all, to God who 
made heaven and earth.” Let us, too, turn our 
faces towards God and say: 

“Great Sun of Righteousness, arise; 

Bless the dark world with heavenly light: 

Thy gospel makes the simple wise, 

Thy laws are pure, Thy judgments right.” 


II 

COUNTING THE STARS 

“He telleth the number of the stars” —Ps. I47 : 4 

D O you think you could do that? Did you 
ever try to count the stars ? I have. When 
I was a boy in Canada, where the stars 
twinkle and shine so clearly, we used to watch for 
the first star, and the first one who saw it would 
say: 

“Star light, star bright, 

First star I've seen to-night?’ 

Then we would see who could count the stars 
as they appeared. One, two, four, five, seven, 
eight, ten, twenty, fifty, eighty, and in a little 
while we all would be lost, both in arithmetic and 
in wonder. 

They call a man who watches and studies the 
stars an astronomer, and the astronomers have 
tried to count the stars, and partly by counting, 
and partly by guessing they tell us there must be 
between 2,000 and 3,000 millions of stars and 
each one is different, for “one star differeth from 
another star in glory.” 

We cannot count the stars, but God can. He 
counts them all and names them, for He made 
them and the stars are not little tiny sparks of 
16 


1 7 


COUNTING THE STARS 

fire, but great wonderful worlds. The great sun 
that lights and warms our world is just a star, and 
a little star. Every star we see in the sky is a 
sun, hundreds of times bigger than our sun. It is 
because they are so far away that they look so 
tiny and so small. Some of the stars in the Milky 
Way are a hundred thousand trillion miles away. 
Think of a hundred thousand trillion miles. Try 
and write out a hundred thousand trillion. You 
put down the figure I, then you write ioo, then 
100,000, then 100,000,000, then you write 100,- 
000,000,000, then you write a hundred thou¬ 
sand trillion like this, 100,000,000,000,000,000; 
and that is the distance some of the stars in the 
Milky Way are from our sun. 

The light that travels from some of these far¬ 
away stars takes millions of years to travel to our 
earth, and light travels fast, 186,000 miles a sec¬ 
ond. No wonder we like to look up into the 
sky on a clear cool night and say : 


“Twinkle, twinkle, little star, 
How I wonder what you are, 
Up above the world so high. 
Like a diamond in the sky. 

“When the blazing sun is set, 
And the grass with dew is wet, 
Then you show your little light, 
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.” 


Stars, just like boys and girls, are different. 
Each has its own way, and its own light. There 
are white stars, and yellow stars, and red stars. 
You have seen a white hot iron, and you know 


i8 


COUNTING THE STARS 


that when it begins to cool it gets yellow and then 
it gets red, and then it gets black. That is the 
way with stars, and perhaps the hottest stars are 
white. I do not know, but I like to think that 
just as God counts the stars and names them so 
he calls every boy and girl by name and cares 
for each one. We live in a big world but God is 
greater than sun and moon and stars. 

The Bible calls Jesus a star. It gives Him a 
star’s name. It calls him “the bright and morn¬ 
ing star.” The morning star leads the world into 
the light of the new day and so Jesus leads us. 
The sailor is guided over the trackless sea by 
the stars. The traveller over the desert picks 
his path by the help of some star, so we too find 
our way to God by keeping our eyes on Jesus. 

There is a story of a young girl who had lost 
her way. She was lost not in the forest, or on 
the sea, but right in her own home. She had 
lost the way to peace, to happiness, and to a quiet 
heart. One night she had a dream. She was in 
a deep, deep pit, and there were no steps, no rope, 
nor ladder. She gave herself up for lost and then 
falling on her knees and looking up she saw a 
piece of blue sky and one star. When she saw 
the star she began to rise. It seemed so strange 
that she said, “Who is lifting me?” and looking 
down she found herself at the bottom. Again 
.•she saw the star and began to rise, but looked 
.again to see who was lifting her and found her¬ 
self at the bottom. A third time she fixed her 
eyes on the shining star, and kept looking until 


COUNTING THE STARS 


19 

she found herself lifted out of the deep pit, and 
she was safe. Then she awoke and said, “I see 
it all now. I am not to look at myself, but at 
Jesus, ‘the bright and morning star.’ ” 

When Sir Harry Lauder was in America he 
was walking with a father and a little boy down 
one of the streets of New York. It was in the 
days of the great war, when service flags with a 
star were hung in the windows. The little lad 
loved to point them out. “Look, father,” he 
would say, “there’s a home that has given a son 
to the war.” “Look, father, there’s another star.” 
“Look, father, there are two stars.” Then the 
lad, looking up at the Evening Star that had ap¬ 
peared in the sky, said, “And look, father, God too 
must have given a son, for there is a star in His 
window.” Yes, God so loved the world that He 
gave—Jesus. 






Ill 


DUST 


“Dust thou art ” —Gen. 3:19 
HE Bible tells us very plainly that our 



bodies are made of dust. God made man 


A of the dust of the earth and breathed into 
him the breath of life. We do not like to think 
we are made out of dust. We like to think we 
are made out of sunshine and rainbows, and if 
there is any dust about us, it must be golden star 


dust. 


I heard once of a dear old Scotchwoman who 
had always refused to have her picture taken. 
Many old ladies, you know, are queer, especially 
Scotch old ladies. Her family, however, urged 
her to have her photograph taken so they could 
send it to one of her sons who lived in America, 
and she consented. When the first proof was 
received she looked at it long and silently and 
then without a word set out for the studio. “Is 
that me?” she said to the photographer. “Yes, 
madam,” he said. “And is it like me ?” she added. 
“Yes, madam, it is a speaking likeness.” Then 
said the old Scotch woman, “Well, if that's so, it’s 
a humbling sight.” 

We laugh at the dear old lady, for we know 
she was wrong, for there is nothing lovelier in 


20 


DUST 


21 


the world than just a fine, sweet, thought-ennobled 
face of a mother or a grandmother. 

And what a wonderful thing dust is! It is 
alive with mystery before which wise men dream 
and wonder. To a wise man who knows, “the 
very dust is dear.” It is a living thing, and out 
of it the world has been made, and scientists tell 
us that we owe our beautiful sunsets and our re¬ 
freshing rain to the dust that floats in the upper 
air. 

We are apt to think the only value dust has 
is to make work, but it is not so. Dust is useful. 
A great scientist once wrote a book which he 
called “The Wonderful Century.” The Wonder¬ 
ful Century was of course the nineteenth century 
which includes all the years between 1800 and 
1900. In this book he wrote about some of the 
marvellous things discovered during those years 
and one of the chapters is about Dust, and among 
other things he said, “It is doubtful whether we 
could even live without dust. To the presence 
of dust we owe the clouds, the mists, the rains.” 
If it were not for the dust instead of soft showers 
and refreshing rains we would have water spouts 
and terrible torrents. It all seems strange, but 
true things are often strange, and sometimes little 
things are really big things. 

A great man by the name of John Ruskin once 
took a handful of mud from the road of a great 
city. It was just a handful of dirty dust mois¬ 
tened with water. This wise man then divided 
the mud into four parts, clay, soot, sand, and 


22 


DUST 


water. Then he told the people who were listen¬ 
ing to him that if the clay were left alone for 
thousands or millions of years it would, under 
certain conditions, become a beautiful sapphire. 
The sand, he said, in the same strange way would 
be changed into a precious opal. The soot, the 
blackest of things, would in time become a brilliant 
diamond and the water could easily be changed 
into a pearly dewdrop or a snow crystal. 

God can change the meanest thing into a price¬ 
less gem, and He can so transform us that we 
can become like Him. We are made of the dust 
of the field but we are also made in the image of 
God. 

“Life is real; life is earnest! 

And the grave is not its goal! 

‘Dust thou art, to dust returnest* 

Was not spoken of the soul.” 

The Apostle John said: “Beloved, now are we 
children of God, and it is not yet manifest what we 
shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, 
we shall be like him; for we shall see him even 
as he is.” 


IV 

A CHRISTMAS STORY-SERMON 

“I am the light of the world .”— John 8 :12 

J ESUS is the Light of the World. There is 
nothing better than light. Think for a min¬ 
ute about the things that are connected with 
light. Light and heat go together. The great 
sun that lights the world and turns darkness into 
day also warms the earth and makes it bring forth 
its harvests of golden grain and precious fruit. 

Light and power go together. Did you know 
that Niagara Falls is one of the greatest power 
plants in the world? Well, if you go there to see 
that great wonder of nature you must see also the 
wonderful power houses along the shore where 
the water turns the wheels and the power gen¬ 
erated by the wheels goes to light the cities of 
Niagara Falls and Buffalo and Toronto and 
drives the trolley lines in a hundred cities and 
towns. Yes, power and light go together. 

Light and health go together. The sun is a 
great physician. It heals. It drives away disease. 
It purifies air and water. Dr. S. Hall Young, the 
veteran missionary to Alaska, told me once that 
for twenty years in Alaska he had never had the 
funeral of a little child. The clear air, the pure 
light, kept disease away. Men who study such 
23 


24 A CHRISTMAS STORY-SERMON 


things tell us there is not a single disease germ, 
not one microbe, on the top of Mount Blanc in 
Switzerland. 

When Jesus came into the world He came to 
be the Light of the World. The Wise Men were 
guided to Him by the light of the star. He is the 
living Light that heals and saves. 

It was away back in 1353, six hundred years 
ago, and a terrible plague known as the Black 
Death had carried off men, women, and children 
by the thousands. People fled in terror from 
towns and cities and lived alone in strange places. 
Friends separated from each other and families 
shut themselves in their own homes and refused 
entrance to all who came. Fear made people more 
like animals of the night than like the children 
of the day. They called the disease the Black 
Death and it certainly drove all the light out of 
the land. 

The Black Death had driven all light and life 
from the streets of the little village of Goldberg 
in Germany. The town looked as if it had been 
struck with death. Christmas Eve came, and the 
city was silent as the grave. A man who had 
been in hiding, believing that he alone was left 
alive, unbarred his door as Christmas Eve sped 
on to Christmas morning, and came out into the 
silent street. The stars were shining bright as 
if all were well, and knowing it was Christmas 
morn, and forgetting the dread months that had 
passed away, he began to sing the old familiar 
Christmas song: 


A CHRISTMAS STORY-SERMON 25 

“To us this day is born a child. 

God with us; 

His mother is a Virgin mild; 

God with us; 

God with us; against us who dare be?” 


He sang the first verse and then a door was 
opened, and a man joined him, and together they 
sang the second verse. Together they walked 
through the silent street and were joined by oth¬ 
ers who came out of their hiding places, until 
there were twenty-five—some of them women and 
children—and they sang the Christmas song until 
they had new hope and courage and the Christmas 
light came into the sky. That was the end of 
the Black Death. Either it had spent itself,* or 
God’s goodness had brought forth new courage 
in the hearts of those twenty five, for not one of 
them died of the Plague and for hundreds of 
years after, the people of the village always met 
together on Christmas Eve at midnight and at 
two o’clock Christmas morning marched through 
the streets singing the same old Christmas hymn: 

“To us this day is born a child 
God with us; 

His mother is a Virgin mild; 

God with us; 

God with us; against us who dare be?” 

Yes, light and health belong together. When the 
Christmas child was born they called His name 
Jesus, which means Saviour. He is the light 
that saves. He is the light that drives away dark¬ 
ness and doubt and death. When Christmas came 


26 A CHRISTMAS STORY-SERMON 


the world began to sing and it has been singing 
ever since: 

“Joy to the world; the Lord is come.” 

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” He 
also said, “Ye are the light of the world.” The 
Christmas light shines because of Jesus, but it 
shines also because of those who walk in the 
Gospel light. At Port Maitland a great pier runs 
out into Lake Erie and on this pier at night there 
burn two lights, one near the end and one near 
the shore. The one at the end is called the Light¬ 
house light and the one near the shore is called 
the Range light, for by means of it the ships 
know not only where the harbor is but the way 
into the harbor. Before the Range light was 
placed on the pier a great ship missed the harbor 
and ran upon the reef. Jesus is the Great light, 
but we too are the range lights giving direction 
to those who wish to find the heavenly harbor 
and the Christmas spirit with its joy and good 
cheer; its glad gifts and helpful service is the 
way in which we obey the Master’s command, 
“Let your light so shine.” 


V 

A DEAD WORLD 


“Fair as the moon.” — Song of Songs 6: io 

T HE other day I was visiting a little friend 
who had been ill for fourteen long 
months, through two winters and one 
summer. He had gone to bed near Christmas and 
had been a little invalid all that year, and through 
the next Christmas. His name is Frederick. He 
has a sister just his own age to the very day, and 
her name is Florence. Florence went to school 
and learned to write and add and subtract and 
do other queer things. Frederick stayed in bed, 
kept very quiet and read. He was only seven, 
but he read all sorts of books, and when he could 
not read others read to him, his nurse, his father, 
or his mother, or Billy or Betty, and he came to 
know a lot of history and science and fairy tales. 

One day when I was telling him about the big 
world outside, and the coming of spring with its 
buds and leaves and flowers he chuckled and said, 
“Some day this world will be just like the moon. ,, 
What do you think of that? What did he mean? 
I thought perhaps he had been reading Robert 
Louis Stevenson who said that 

“The moon has a face like the clock in the hall 
It shines on thieves on the garden wall.” 

27 


28 


A DEAD WORLD 


Then I thought perhaps it was Mother Goose he 
was thinking of: 

“The man in the moon 
Came tumbling down 
And asked the way to Norwich. 

He went by the south 
And burnt his mouth 
With supping cold pease-porridge.” 

I soon knew, however, that he was not thinking 
about fancies and fairies, but about facts, and I 
said, “Why do you think so ?” “Well,” said he in 
a wise sort of way, “don’t you know the moon is 
dead and some day this world will be dead just like 
the moon.” Of course I knew that. Everybody 
knows that. The moon is dead. Nothing lives 
in the moon. Nothing ever happens there. No 
storms, no lightning, no noise, no dust, no twi¬ 
light, no blue sky, no twinkling stars, nothing hap¬ 
pens in the moon. There is no life, no air there, 
and the sky is as black as ink. It has no weather. 
It is a dead world. 

No wonder “the man in the moon has a crick 
in his back. Whee! Whim! Ain’t you sorry 
for him?” Perhaps this is why people have al¬ 
ways thought the moon harmed people and made 
them go out of their heads, as we say. Do you 
remember the Psalm that says, “The sun shall 
not smite thee by day nor the moon by night?” 
You can have a moonstroke, as well as a sun¬ 
stroke. All dead things are bad, and a dead world 
like the moon may have a bad influence on people, 
especially on young people who stay out late at 
night. 


A DEAD WORLD 


29 


I said, “Yes, the moon is dead, a dead, dead 
world, but how beautiful it is and how wonder¬ 
ful it is at night. How is that? If it is dead how 
is it so full of light?” And I repeated the verse: 

“Moon, so round and yellow, 

Looking from on high, 

How I love to see you 
Shining in the sky. 

Oft and oft I wonder, 

When I see you there, 

How they get to light you, 

Hanging in the air.” 


Then Frederick turned over and said with a laugh, 
“Don’t you know ? Why, it’s the sun that makes 
the moon beautiful. The moon is dead, but the 
sun shines on it, and makes it shine.” And then 
I thought that we, too, are something like the 
moon, sort of dead and dull and useless, until 
Jesus, the great sun of our life, shines upon us 
and lights up our lives. The only way for us to 
be bright and useful is to have Jesus shine upon 
us. If we stay near Him we will be like Him. 

Frederick is well now and lives out in a real 
live world and some day when I see him I am 
going to preach this story-sermon to him and 
then read and explain to him this sermon-story 
in rhyme: 

“A Persian fable says: One day 
A wanderer found a lump of clay 
So redolent of sweet perfume, 

Its odours scented all the room. 

‘What art thou?’ was his quick demand; 

‘Art thou some gem from the Samarkand, 

Or Spikenard in this rude disguise, 

Or other costly merchandise?’ 


30 


A DEAD WORLD 


‘Nay! I am but a lump of clay/ 

‘Then whence this wondrous sweetness—say?’ 
‘Friend, if the secret I disclose, 

I have been dwelling with the rose!” 

Perhaps that verse of poetry is rather hard 
for little children to understand, but its meaning 
is very simple. It means that just as a piece 
of clay which has no sweetness in itself may 
become fragrant by being in the same place with 
a rose, so we too may become sweet and lovely 
by living in the presence of Jesus. The sweet¬ 
ness of the rose sweetens the clay, and the love 
and beauty of our Lord make us kind and sweet 
also. I am sure Frederick will understand both 
the story and the sermon. 


VI 


THE GREATEST CRADLE IN 
THE WORLD 

“The sea is his.” —Ps. 95: 5 

C RADLES are out of fashion in these days. 
Babies are no longer in need of cradles. 
They need, not cradles, but cold dark silent 
rooms, perfectly good old fashioned beds, and to 
be left entirely alone to think and to meditate and 
not to cry. 

Somehow I like the old way. I know it's not 
the best way, but still it is best for song and story 
and when you come to think of it, nature too, 
likes a cradle and has no idea of giving up to 
our new-fangled modern notions. 

What is a beautiful valley lying between hills 
and mountains but a cradle, soft and green, in 
which sleep fields of golden grain and pretty vil¬ 
lages, and what are the trees of the forests and 
the streets but cradles, rocked by the wind. You 
remember the lullaby song: 

“Rock-a-bye baby 
In the tree top, 

When the bough bends 
The cradle will rock.” 

But the greatest cradle in the whole wide world 
is the sea. The deep, dark, boundless sea is the 
31 


32 GREATEST CRADLE IN THE WORLD 

greatest cradle in the world. The very first bed 
God ever made was the sea and there the first 
life was cradled. What a cradle it is! How great 
it is! It rocks from East to West, from shore 
to shore, and ships and islands and continents 
sleep in it. You know what the old song says: 

“Rocked in the cradle of the deep 
I lay me down in peace to sleep; 

Secure I rest upon the wave, 

For Thou, O Lord! hast power to save. 

I know Thou wilt not slight my call, 

For Thou dost mark the sparrow’s fall; 

And calm and peaceful shall I sleep, 

Rocked in the cradle of the deep.” 

How cold it is! The icy waters of the far 
North and of the far South slip down into its 
depths. How deep it is! You could never reach 
down into it with your arms. The highest moun¬ 
tain in the world could lie down in it and be 
lost from sight. How heavy is its covering! I 
suppose that is because it is so cold. Do you know 
if you were to lie down at the bottom of this great 
cradle you would have to carry about 250 tons 
of watery bed covers. Think of that! 

Away down at the bottom of the deep, cold 
cradle of the sea, it is dark and still. There is 
no noise there, no light ever gets down into that 
quiet chamber. Occasionally a little animal with 
a little phosphorescent light passes by to see that 
all is well and then everything is dark and silent 
again. 

And yet down there in that great cradle of the 
sea little animals live and thrive, fed by the sea 


GREATEST CRADLE IN THE WORLD 33 

dust that filters down from above, for the sea 
is God’s cradle and even there God cares for His 
creatures. In one of the Psalms we read: 

“If I take the wings of the morning, 

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; 

Even there shall thy hand lead me, 

And thy right hand shall hold me." 

If He cares for the fish of the deep, deep sea, will 
He not care for us ? 

There is no place in all the world where God 
cannot come to His children. When a great hero 
of the sea was caught in a terrible storm and all 
the crew was in a panic of fear, He calmly said, 
“We are as near God on the sea as on the land.” 
How true! And, after all, the greatest cradle in 
the world is not the trees of the forest, or the 
great deep silent sea, but the arms of our Heavenly 
Father. Where in the Bible will you find it said 
that “The Eternal God is our refuge, and under¬ 
neath are the everlasting arms” ? 


VII 

WHAT THE BELLS SAY 

“A golden bell”— Ex. 28: 34 

M ORE than a hundred years ago a sailing 
, ship far out on the sea, a hundred miles 
from shore, heard the sound of church 
hells. It was Sunday morning and the bells were 
ringing, calling people to church. They seemed 
to say: 

“Come when I call, 

Both great and small.” 

At first those upon the vessel thought it was only 
fancy, for they were far from shore. There was 
only one place on the ship where the bells could 
be heard and that was before the bulging main 
sail, and there the sound of the church bells could 
be clearly heard, calling, calling, to worship and 
prayer. 

Months passed and the vessel one day sailed 
into the port of San Salvador and on inquiry the 
sailors learned that at the exact time when the 
bells were heard upon the ship far out at sea, 
the church bells of the cathedral were ringing. 
It was a great mystery to the sailors, but it is 
•easy for us to understand. In our day when we 
know how easily the air carries the voice over 
34 


WHAT THE BELLS SAY 35 

land and sea we can understand how the sound 
of the bells could be caught by the bulging sail. 

What a pleasing sound it is to hear the call 
of the “church going bell. ,, In old England where 
every village church has a bell you will find each 
of them has a motto graven in the metal. Some 
of these mottoes are interesting. Here is one 
that says: 


“Come away, 
Make no delay.” 


Another says: 


“Come and pray, 
Hear and obey.” 


Sometimes the bell is vain and the motto reads: 


“I am a pretty bell, 

That you all may see.” 


And sometimes the bell is modest and sensitive and 
sometimes they tell the praises of those who made 
them: 


“Our merry bell is mainly due 
To Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Carew.” 


Here is a complaining and grumbling motto: 

“Our tone would have been made deeper 
If contributions had been greater.” 


What strange messages for church bells! Some 
of them are vain, some foolish, some selfish. A 


WHAT THE BELLS SAY 


36 

church bell should send out one clear note. It 
should say, like the bells of Bath, 

“Let Christ be known around, 

And loved where’er we sound. 

Then shall true jovs abound. 

Before Him lowly fall, 

Where’er we lift our call 
And praise Him Lord of all ” 

There is one bell, a very little bell, that rings 
sometimes very quietly and sometimes sounds a 
loud alarm and we can never get away from its 
sound. Do you know its name? Yes, it is Con¬ 
science. Sometimes it rings a merry, merry tune, 
and sometimes it sounds a warning. The teacher 
examining a Sunday School said, “Who can tell 
me what Conscience is?” One of the big boys 
said, “It is too big a word for me.” Then the 
teacher said, “Did you ever feel anything inside 
you that said, ‘Do this/ ‘Shun that/ ‘You ought 
to have done this/ ‘You should not have said 
that’?” “Oh, yes,” said George, “that is Jesus 
ringing a bell in our hearts.” And George was 
right. Better than the call of the church bell in 
the steeple is the call of Conscience which is the 
voice of Jesus, guiding us in ways of pleasantness 
and in paths of peace. 


VIII 

THE UNSEEN COMRADE 

“Lo, I see four men .”— Dan. 3: 25 

O NCE upon a time there lived in the far 
away land of Babylon a great king. His 
name was Nebuchadnezzar. What a ter¬ 
rible name for a man and it must have been more 
terrible for a boy. He was a great, strong king, 
and he loved his own way. One day he set up 
in Babylon a great image or idol of gold, and or¬ 
dered every one to worship it. Great plans were 
made. It was arranged that at a certain time 
when the people heard the sound of “the cornet, 
flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer” that 
everybody should fall down and worship the great 
idol of gold. If any should refuse to worship he 
would be cast into a burning, fiery furnace. 

When the music sounded all the people fell 
upon their faces. Did I say all the people ? I was 
wrong. There were three young men who refused 
to bow before the idol. They were Hebrew young 
men with names as strange as the name of Nebu¬ 
chadnezzar: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. 
They worshipped the living and true God, and 
Him only, and they refused to worship anything 
made of gold. So they were taken and bound and 
cast into the furnace of fire. The soldiers thought 
37 


THE UNSEEN COMRADE 


38 

they would immediately perish, but when they 
looked again into the furnace they saw them walk¬ 
ing unharmed in the midst of the fire, and the 
strangest of all strange things they saw. They saw 
not three men but four. They came running to 
the king. The king himself went to the furnace 
and looking in said, “Lo I see four men loose, 
walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no 
hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son 
of God.” God Himself had entered into the.fiery 
furnace and kept His loyal servants safe from 
harm. 

That is an old, old story. But I can tell you 
a new, new story just like it. It happened not 
very long ago. A man with another strange 
name—his name was Shackleton—set out in a 
great strong ship called the “Endurance” to find 
his way to the South Pole. His ship was crushed 
to splinters in the ice and he and his companions 
nearly lost their lives. Leaving the wrecked ship 
they made their way across ice and snow and sea 
to South Georgia Island, and there Shackleton 
and two of his companions, Worsley and Crean, 
made their way across the Island, a perilous march 
of thirty-six hours, over ice mountains, down dan¬ 
gerous chasms, and once they let themselves over 
a thirty-foot waterfall by a rope and finally came 
to the whaling station. For a year and a half they 
had been in the lonely ice world and the first to 
meet these three strange looking men were two 
little boys belonging to the station, who fled from 
them in terror. 


THE UNSEEN COMRADE 


39 

When they had been warmed and washed and 
clothed, after their long and lonely journey, Sir 
Ernest Shackleton said to his companions, “It 
seemed to me often that we were four, not three.” 
His companion Worsley said later, “Boss, I had a 
curious feeling on the march that there was an¬ 
other person with us.” And Crean confessed that 
he, too, had felt the presence of the great unseen 
Companion. 

So you see whether it is in the fire, or in the ice 
fields, God cares for those who trust Him, and 
always with us is our unseen Comrade, who says: 

“Fear not 

For I have redeemed thee; 

I have called thee by thy name, 

Thou art mine. 

When thou passest 
Through the waters 
I will be with thee: 

And through the rivers 
They shall not overflow thee; 

When thou walkest through the fire, 

Thou shalt not be burned; 

Neither shall the flame 
Kindle upon thee, 

For I am Jehovah thy God 
The Holy One of Israel; 

Thy Saviour.” 


IX 

THE TEST 

“Try me.” —Ps. 139: 23 

T HE other day I went with a friend through 
the great Carnegie steel mills where men 
were busy at the fires and furnaces and 
forges making steel and turning it out into rails 
and beams and rods and great sheets of steel. It 
was very interesting and very noisy. 

But the most interesting thing to me was not 
the fire, nor the forge, nor the furnace, but what 
I saw in a little quiet room fitted up with strange 
cold looking machines, each run by two young 
men. This was what they called the testing room. 

From every furnace a sample of steel was taken. 
A piece about as long as my arm or less, and as 
wide and thick as my four fingers. This piece of 
steel was gripped at each end by one of these 
machines and pulled or stretched, just as you 
would stretch a piece of rubber. You could see 
the steel as it was drawn becoming thinner and 
thinner until suddenly it snapped. Each of these 
little pieces of pure steel stood the test up to about 
56,000 pounds pressure, and then it broke. The 
men then knew where to put the great pieces of 
steel to which the piece that had been tested be¬ 
longed. If it stood a high pressure they put the 
40 


THE TEST 


41 


steel into railroad trains and automobiles where 
safety was required and if it stood only a low 
pressure they used it for something less worthy. 

We, too, are tested. We are tested out in the 
great world, at home, at school, everywhere we 
are being tested and tried and if we prove worthy 
we are given a place of honour and usefulness. 
The Bible tells us over and over again that God 
tests and tries us: 

“The righteous God trieth the hearts.” 

“Search me, O God, and know my heart: 

Try me, and know my thoughts.” 

“When he hath tried me I shall come forth as gold.” 

“Thou, O God, hast tried us as silver is tried.” 

Shortly after the time of Jesus there lived a 
great and good man by the name of John Chrysos¬ 
tom. He was called “the golden-mouthed” 
preacher. He was a great man and a great 
preacher of the Gospel. The Roman Emperor 
ordered him to give up his Christian faith or he 
would be exiled. Chrysostom replied, “Thou 
canst not, for the world is my Father s house; 
thou canst not banish me.” Then said the em¬ 
peror, “I will slay thee.” Chrysostom replied, 
“Nay, but thou canst not, for my life is hid with 
Christ in God.” “I will take away thy treasure,” 
said the emperor. “Nay,” said Chrysostom, “but 
thou canst not, for I have none that thou knowest 
of. My treasure is in heaven.” “Then,” said 
the emperor, “I will drive thee from thy friends 


THE TEST 


42 

and thou shalt have no friends left.” “Nay,” said 
this brave man, who was being tested and tried, 
“thou canst not, for I have a Friend from whom 
thou canst not separate me. I defy thee. There 
is nothing thou canst do to hurt me.” 

What a brave man he was, and how nobly he 
v stood the test, and like Job came forth as gold. 
Let us make this text our prayer: 

“Search me 
O God 

And know my heart; 

Try me 

And know my thoughts. 

And see if there be any wicked way in me 
And lead me in the way everlasting.” 


X 


CAMOUFLAGE 


“I shall seem to him as a deceiver.” —Gen. 27: 12 



AMOUFLAGE! That is a big word. It is 


one of the words the war gave us. When 


I went to France the ship was camouflaged, 
that is, it was painted so as to hide it when it was 
on the sea. The guns were camouflaged, that is, 
they were covered with the branches of trees to 
make them look like the forest itself. The roads 
were camouflaged, that is, they were made to look, 
not like roads, but like the fields, so the enemy 
would not know. 

There is a wonderful story of camouflage in 
the Bible. It is the story of Jacob. You remem¬ 
ber his mother wanted him to receive the blessing 
of his old blind father. So she dressed him up 
to make him feel like Esau. Esau was a hairy 
man, and she put skins of kids on Jacob’s neck 
and hands and when he went to seek his father’s 
blessing Isaac, his father, said, “The hands are 
the hands of Esau, but the voice is the voice of 
Jacob.” That was camouflage. 

It is a bad thing to try to cheat and deceive and 
betray. You remember what Alice said to the 
Duchess in “Alice in Wonderland.” She said, 
“Oh, I know it’s a vegetable; it doesn’t look like 


43 





44 CAMOUFLAGE 

one, but it is.” And the Duchess said, "I quite 
agree with you. The moral of that is, Be what 
you seem/ ” That is a good motto. “Be what 
you seem.” There is so much sham and pretence 
in the world. There are so many imitations of 
real things. Let us be real and be what we seem 
to be. 

But there is a good kind of camouflage. The 
world is full of it. We learned camouflage from 
nature. The lizard in the grass is not seen be¬ 
cause it, too, is green. The snake, too, we miss, 
because it is just the color of the meadow, or the 
soil. The spotted leopard in the jungle is perfectly 
camouflaged. The polar bear in the great white 
wilderness of the North is also white, as white as 
snow. And the animals and birds change their 
colour with the seasons, and with the soil. Some¬ 
times the rabbit and the fox are white when win¬ 
ter comes; and the birds hide themselves in colour 
like their own. There is an old tale of a chame¬ 
leon that when chased by a dog suddenly turned 
around, opened its great pink mouth, and changed 
colour so quickly that the dog was scared nearly 
to death and ran for its life. They say that once 
a chameleon, one of these little animals that 
change their colour so easily, was put on a brown 
rug and became brown, on a green rug it was 
green, on a blue rug it was blue, and when put 
on a Persian rug it died. Of course that is a 
foolish tale, but animals find safety and security 
in adapting themselves to the colour of their sur¬ 
roundings. 


CAMOUFLAGE 


45 


We, too, live in a difficult and dangerous world. 
It is not easy to escape all our enemies. Some¬ 
times we have to hide ourselves in some 'Safe 
place. We read in one of the Psalms that in the 
time of trouble God will hide us, and one man 
offers a prayer that God will “hide him under the 
shadow of his wings.” That is the best place to 
hide in time of danger. 

“Rock of ages, cleft for me 
Let me hide myself in Thee.” 

During the war I remember going out one dark 
moonless night up to the front line trenches. The 
road came to an end in the woods. There in the 
side of a hill in a little camouflaged chapel we 
found some of our American soldiers. It was a 
little shrine which they had built, covered with 
branches of trees and so camouflaged it could not 
be seen. There they felt secure as in the presence 
of God. No enemy can find us, if we hide our¬ 
selves with God. Martin Luther used to say, “If 
any one should come and knock at my heart and 
say, 'Who lives here?’ I would say, ‘Not Martin 
Luther, but Jesus Christ lives here/ for Martin 
Luther’s life is hid with Christ in God.” 




XI 


LIVING GRAIN 

“A grain of wheat ”— John 12:24 

D ID you ever hear the story of the two bags 
of grain? It is an old Eastern story and 
is like one of the parables Jesus was fond 
of telling. Once upon a time an Eastern prince 
took a long journey and left with his two friends 
two sacks of corn to be kept till he returned. After 
a long time he came back and said, “Where is my 
corn ?” The first friend led him to his cellar, and 
showed him the bag of corn, all soft and rotten 
and useless. “Where is my corn?” he asked the 
second, and his friend led him out to the farm 
and showed him a great field of waving corn, 
“That is your corn,” he said. Then the prince 
told the first friend he could have the useless corn 
in the cellar and to the second he said, “When 
you reap the harvest give me back one sack and 
keep all the rest.” Which friend was wise? 

If we would keep grain we must sow it in the 
fields. Old grain will die after a while. 

Perhaps you have read stories to the effect that 
grain found in the wrappings of mummies, three 
or four or five thousand years old, if planted will 
live again and grow. I have read such stories, 
with exact dates, and wondered how they could 
46 


LIVING GRAIN 


47 

be told over and over again, for I know that old 
grain found with mummies thousands of years 
old does not grow. 

One day I asked a friend who knows all about 
such things. His name is Dr. Coulter and he 
teaches Botany and other such subjects to the stu¬ 
dents of the University of Chicago, and writes 
about flowers and fruits, and wheat and corn. 

He told me this story. Years ago, when the 
first mummies were found in Egypt—you know 
what a mummy is—a wise German professor took 
some of the seeds of grain found in these tombs 
and planted them in his garden. Every morning 
he went out to see if the corn had sprouted and 
each morning he came back into the house shaking 
his head and saying, “No, there is no sign of life.” 
Days went by, and he was quite disappointed and 
ready to admit that old, old grain, thousands of 
years old, would not grow again. 

The German professor had two boys, two small 
boys, and there is nothing too hard or too difficult 
for two small boys. Seeing their father’s disap¬ 
pointment they set to work to cheer his heart, and 
to cause the old Egyptian grain to grow. So they 
found some real fresh wheat and sowed it in the 
garden where their father had sowed the old grain 
and pretty soon it sprouted and the green blades 
came up through the ground and the German pro¬ 
fessor rubbed his hands and laughed and said, 
“True, the old grain grows again.” Then he sat 
down and wrote out the story and it was printed 
in a German paper. 




48 


LIVING GRAIN 


Little by little, however, the true story leaked 
out, for the boys told what they had done to a 
friend of their father. He was disturbed. Would 
he keep quiet, or would he tell the professor? He 
decided to tell and so their father had to write 
to the same paper and deny his first story, and 
say that old grain, found in the cases of mummies, 
thousands of years old, does not grow. But the 
truth has never caught up with the first lie, and 
it is still told that grain never loses its life. 

But it does. Grain does die. The only way to 
keep grain living is to sow it, plant it in the field. 
That is what Jesus said, “Verily, verily, I say unto 
you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground 
and die it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth 
forth much fruit.” 

Remember, then, the story of the prince and 
the two sacks of corn. What we keep we lose. 
What we sow we keep. If we wish to be rich we 
must sow the seed of good deeds, kind words, and 
loving thoughts. 

Remember, too, we can only get a living harvest 
from living grain. We must not trust in the past 
but in the present. We, indeed, reap from the 
sowing of our parents and the great and the good 
of the past, but if others are also to reap a golden 
harvest we ourselves must sow living seed. 

“Let the dead past bury its dead; 

Act, act in the living present; 

Heart within, and God o’er head.” 


XII 

THE HOME OF THE WHEAT 

“It may chance of wheat ”—i Cor. 15:37 

D ID you ever see a field of golden grain out 
on the western prairie? How wonderful 
it is! How wide and long the field is! 
There are acres and acres and miles and miles 
of waving wheat soon to be cut and then threshed 
and then ground up into fine white flour. It is one 
of the most beautiful sights in the world. And 
how useful, for all these great gardens of wheat 
are to be turned into bread. Where did the beau¬ 
tiful wheat come from? We know now that 
wheat is very, very old. We are told that wheat 
was harvested ten thousand years ago. They grew 
wheat and ate bread, but not beautiful bread like 
ours, away back in Egypt and Greece and Baby¬ 
lon. Last year in America there were 300,000,000 
bushels of what is called Marquis wheat harvested. 
This is the wonderful spring wheat which grows 
in Canada and the United States. Now the won¬ 
derful thing is that all this mighty harvest of 
wheat came from a single grain of wheat planted 
in a garden at Ottawa in Canada by Dr. Charles 
E. Sanders in 1903. This is the way wheat multi¬ 
plies, in 1903 one grain and in 1923, twenty years 
after, 300,000,000 bushels. How many loaves of 
49 


THE HOME OF THE WHEAT 


50 

bread would 300,000,000 bushels of fine hard 
wheat make? 

But where did that one single grain come from? 
Where is the home of this great bread-making 
plant? Well, we are told that its home is on Mt. 
Hermon, and along the Jordan in the Holy Land. 
For this reason Palestine is called the “cradle of 
the cereals.” There it still grows wild and it has 
been taken and cultivated and developed, and now 
we have our wheat and our beautiful bread. This 
is very interesting. Jesus called Himself the 
Bread of Life, and we have found that out of the 
same country that gave us Jesus there has come 
also the bread that feeds our bodies. From the 
same Holy Land has come the bread for the soul 
and the bread for the body. And both have come 
from God our Father, who cares for all His chil¬ 
dren. Of Jesus, the living bread, we think when 
we say: 

‘‘Break thou the Bread of Life, 

Dear Lord, to me 

As Thou didst break the loaves 

Beside the sea.” 

Of the great harvest wheat fields we think when 
we say: 

“Back of the loaf is the snowy flour, 

And back of the flour the mill; 

And back of the mill is the wheat and the shower, 

And the sun and the Father’s will.” 

And so we pray: 

“Give us this day, 

Our daily bread.” 


XIII 

SHOOTING STARS 

“Like wandering stars .”— Jude 13 

D ID you ever see a star shoot straight: 
across the sky? How swift and straight 
it goes. I was in France on Easter Day 
when the great German gun fired a shell into 
Paris, seventy miles away, and killed many people. 
But that is nothing compared to the distance trav¬ 
elled by a shooting star. 

What is a shooting star? It is a great piece 
of stone or iron or metal, travelling through the 
air at the rate of twenty or thirty miles a second. 
When it gets about seventy-five miles from the 
earth, the air puts on the brakes, as it were, and 
the great mass begins to glow and burn. You 
know how brakes on a train or a car can make 
the wheels hot, and perhaps set them on fire. So 
the air acts as a brake upon the falling rock, or 
star, as we call it, and it takes fire and when it is 
about twenty miles from the earth it just burns 
up and disappears in a sort of fiery vapour. We 
are told that from ten to one hundred millions of 
these shooting stars are burned up and cremated 
every day. Some weigh an ounce, some a ton, 
but almost every one is caught in the air which, 
like a torpedo net, protects our world. 

51 





52 SHOOTING STARS 

Sometimes a great many of these wandering 
stars are drawn into a group, and this swarm of 
shooting stars is called a comet. They are caught 
by the attractive power of the sun and made to 
travel round his throne. They travel so fast that 
a long thin tail is formed. The great comet of 
1843 had a tail 200,000,000 miles long, and trav¬ 
elled around the sun 300 or 400 miles a second. 
No wonder we are half afraid of comets and 
shooting stars that wander like lost worlds in the 
upper air. The stars that help us stay in their 
places and keep their course. This is why we 
think of them as singing as they shine. . Our 
world with its sun and moon and stars is so 
beautiful because they are obedient to the will 
of God, which is the law of their life, and our 
lives will be beautiful and useful only as we, too, 
are obedient to our Heavenly Father. 

In an old cemetery where there are many old 
graves and many strange mottoes on the stones, 
there is one which I like to think about. It is 
very, very old, and weather-worn, and there are 
just three words on it. One of the words is the 
name of a little boy, “Freddie,” and under his 
name these two words, “Yes, Father.” It is a 
good thing to say “Yes” to God. There is no 
better motto than that. It is a good motto for 
school, and home, and church. 

Think of the men in the Bible who are like 
shooting stars, wandering from God, and dis¬ 
appearing in the darkness. 


SHOOTING STARS 53 

Cain was the first shooting star. 

Lot was a shooting star. 

Saul, the first king, was a shooting star. 

So was Samson, and so was Solomon. 

Judas was a shooting star. 

So was Demas. Do you know about Demas ? 

Then name over all the wonderful fixed stars 
in the Bible. Men like Abraham, and Moses, and 
David and Paul, and Peter and John, and women 
like Ruth and Esther and Mary and Dorcas. 
Do you know about Dorcas? Shooting stars 
leave their places and fall into the night. The 
stars that are obedient keep their appointed 
courses, 

“And utter forth a glorious voice, 

Forever singing as they shine, 

‘The hand that made us is Divine.’” 


Obedience is the path to joy and peace. 


XIV 

FLOWERS AND PRAYERS 

“A sweet savour.” —Gen. 8 : 21 


F LOWERS speak a language of their own. 
The red rose speaks of love and the poet 
sings about it in beautiful words: 

“Oh, my love is like a red, red rose. 

That’s newly sprung in June.” 

The white rose and lily speak of purity, and we 
talk of one who “bears the white flower of a 
blameless life.” The carnation reminds us of 
mother and Mother’s Day, and the four leafed 
clover we say speaks of “good luck” and the 
hedge rose with its thorns says, “Beware.” The 
poppy makes us think of the soldiers who lie 
sleeping in Flanders Fields between the white 
crosses row on row: 

“In Flanders Fields the poppies blow 
Between the crosses, row on row, 

That mark our place; and in the sky 
The larks, still bravely singing, fly, 

Scarce heard amid the guns below.” 

There is an old notion that prayers are like 
flowers. I have often wondered why prayers and 
flowers belong together and now I understand. 
It is because of their beauty, especially the beauty 
54 


FLOWERS AND PRAYER 


55 


of their perfume, which ascends from both flow¬ 
ers and prayers. There is a fragrance that be¬ 
longs only to flowers and prayers. The Bible 
tells us that prayers are sweet to God. In great 
cathedrals sweet smelling incense is used to sug¬ 
gest that prayer is pleasing to God. Like prayer 
it ascends. It is fragrant. It is sweet. But I 
like to think that the sweetness of prayer is more 
like the fragrance of beautiful flowers. 

And perhaps this is the way to explain a beau¬ 
tiful old story. One night, when the birds were 
asleep and the moon was behind a thin, silvery 
cloud, a mother who was watching her little girl 
lying in her crib fell asleep herself and as she 
slept she dreamed a dream. She dreamed that 
she was in heaven and saw all the prayers come 
in and they came in as flowers come to the home 
on Easter Day or to the hospital when we are 
sick. The prayers came up to heaven like flow¬ 
ers and the angels carried them into a beautiful 
room to arrange them and to sort them. Some 
were in full bloom and some were only in bud. 
Sometimes there was a single flower and some¬ 
times there were great clusters of them. Sud¬ 
denly the angel paused and then picking up a deli¬ 
cate little rosebud, was about to leave the room, 
now so full of fragrance and loveliness. Holding" 
up the little rosebud the angel said, “This is for 
the Master/’ and the mother said, “Whence is the 
rosebud? Who sent it? What is it?” Then the 
angel smiled and said, “Oh, knowest thou not? 
This is the first prayer of a little child.” Then 


FLOWERS AND PRAYER 


56 

the mother awoke and looked into the face of her 
little girl who had fallen asleep with a prayer 
upon her lips. 

“The first prayer of a little child.” That I 
think is the most beautiful prayer of all. Surely 
it is like a rosebud, in the Master’s hand. 

You know how eagerly we listen to a little 
child’s first word and how we treasure it. Prayer 
is just speaking to God, and a little child’s first 
prayer is the first word spoken to God and He 
listens for that first prayer just as a mother listens 
for and loves her child’s first word. 


XV 

THE GREATEST MILL IN THE WORLD 

“Out of their holes like worms.” —Micah 7:17 


H ERE is a riddle. What is the greatest 
mill in the world? I feel sure you can 
never guess it. Let us count over all the 
mills we know. First of all there is the mill 
where grain is ground into flour. We call it a 
flour mill or a grist mill, and we have all seen 
those great flour mills where harvest fields of 
wheat are ground up to make flour for bread. 
It was of the miller of such a mill that the old 
folks used to sing: 

“There was a jolly miller once 
Lived on the River Dee; 

He worked and sang from morn till night, 

No lark more blithe than he. 

“And this the burden of his song 
Forever used to be, 

‘I care for nobody, no, not I, 

If no one cares for me.’” 

He was a rather selfish, independent old miller, I 
guess. But a flour mill is not the greatest mill 
in the world. 

Then there are great steel mills here in Pitts¬ 
burgh that roar and flash and smoke and some¬ 
times make noises like thunder and send out flames 
57 


58 GREATEST MILL IN THE WORLD 

like lightning. They line the banks of our great 
rivers for miles, but even they are not the great¬ 
est in the world. 

The greatest mill in the world is quiet, and very 
still. It never thunders. It never roars. You 
could pass over it and never notice it. No, it is 
not a beehive, although that is a great mill, but 
it is not quiet and still, for bees buzz and fret and 
fume a great deal. No, it is not an ant hill, but 
you are getting nearer, “getting hot,” as we say. 
An ant hill is a great mill, and it is quiet and silent 
and so busy that if you put a thermometer right 
into an ant hill you will find there is a rise in tem¬ 
perature on account of the work done in that little 
mill. Will you give up? You can never guess. 
Let me tell you. 

Well, the greatest miller in the world is—a 
worm. Yes, an earthworm, what we call a fish- 
worm, a common angle-worm. It is the greatest 
miller in the world and the greatest mill is the 
soil where the earthworms work and burrow. If 
the earthworms did not work and keep on plough¬ 
ing and cultivating the soil this earth of ours 
would be cold and hard and barren, the soil would 
become hard and cold as rock. It would be like 
baked clay, but the earthworms plough and culti¬ 
vate and make it porous and loose, so that the 
rain can filter down, and the plants and vegetables 
can grow and take root. You never thought of 
that, did you? You never knew these little, in¬ 
significant, harmless, horrid worms were so use¬ 
ful. Well, that is just the mistake we often make. 


GREATEST MILL IN THE WORLD 59 

We think we must be big, and great to be useful. 
Not at all. The little things are the most useful. 

In an acre of land, a piece about as big as our 
church lot, a wise man counted 53,000 earth¬ 
worms, and in a rich garden there would be over 
half a million. We are told that these worms pass 
ten tons an acre through their bodies and have 
been doing this for millions of years, grinding, 
ploughing, cultivating the soil and making it fit 
for things to grow in. You see then that the 
earthworms are our helpers, and though they are 
so little and so humble, yet they do very useful 
and necessary work. It is always so. Little 
things working together do great things. 

Jesus said much about the value of little things. 
He said a cup of cold water given in His name was 
something- done for Him. He said that any one 
who was faithful about little things would be 
faithful in great things. He praised the poor 
widow for giving two mites in the Temple offer¬ 
ing. He tried to make us understand that the 
little things are after all the big things. Do you 
know that St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, one 
of the most beautiful churches in the world, was 
built out of sixpences, little English pieces of 
money like our dimes? How was that? Well, 
when they decided to build that great and won¬ 
derful cathedral they placed a tax of sixpence 
on every ton of coal used in the land, and out of 
this tax the beautiful cathedral was built. Little 
things grow into big things. You do not need to 
wait until you can do some great and wonderful 


60 GREATEST MILL IN THE WORLD 

thing. Some little word or act of love may grow 
into what will seem some day to be a miracle. 
Don’t wait for the big things. Do beautiful little 
things now. 


“If any little word of mine 
May make a life the brighter, 

If any little song of mine 
May make a heart the lighter, 

God help me speak that little word, 

And take my bit of singing, 

And drop it in some lonely vale, 

To set the echoes ringing! 

“If any little love of mine 

May make a life the sweeter, 

If any little care of mine 

May make a friend’s the fleeter, 

If any lift of mine may ease 
The burden of another, 

God give me love, and care, and strength 
To help my toiling brother!” 


XVI 

HABITS 

“As His custom was .”— Luke 4:16 

A HABIT, you know, is something you wear. 
A riding habit is what you wear when 
you ride a beautiful horse. It is some¬ 
thing that exactly fits you, that belongs to you, 
and becomes you. 

A little girl in trying to tell what habit is said 
it is your second self. And she was right. You 
can’t get away from your habits any more than 
you can get away from yourself. Just think 
about it. If you take away the first letter you 
still have “a bit” left. If you take away the sec¬ 
ond letter there is still a “bit” left. If you take 
away the third letter you still have “it.” Our 
habits are ourselves. 

A good boy has good habits and a bad boy has 
bad habits. And our habits are made when we 
are very young. Our brains when we are little 
children are just like fluffy snow. You know 
how soft and smooth new fallen snow is. Then 
you see a pair of little feet running across the 
snow and you have footprints in the snow. Then 
those same little feet travel back over the same 
tracks and return and by and by there is a path 
61 


62 HABITS 

in the snow. Now thoughts and acts and words, 
repeated again and again make tracks in our brain 
and in our soul and these paths when they become 
well beaten are habits. Habits are the paths our 
thoughts and actions take. 

Last summer at a farmhouse near my summer 
home in Canada I saw an interesting example of 
habit. My friend Mr. Cotter, whom his good 
wife calls “Sack,” is the warden in the little 
church at Port Maitland. That is to say, he is 
the chief man, next to the minister, and watches 
over the church, takes up the collection, and keeps 
his eye on the preacher and his ears open to the 
preaching. His father had been warden before 
him and before his father his grandfather had 
held the same important position. So Mr. Cotter 
knew all about the church. 

One Sunday morning as usual he was getting 
ready for church and had harnessed up old Dolly 
and hitched her to the buggy and then gone in to 
wash his hands, put on his coat and take a last 
look at himself in the glass. That is the way 
all good farmers do. They dress the horse first, 
and then themselves. 

When he came out Dolly was gone. She was 
nowhere to be seen. He looked in the shed, and 
in the field and behind the barn, but there was no 
Dolly. Where do you think she was ? Yes! She 
had gone off herself with the empty buggy to 
church and Mr. Cotter found her looking over 
the fence, listening to the first hymn. Old Dolly, 
better than most people, had good old-fashioned 


HABITS 63 

habits of church-going, and she had a fine habit 
of being on time. 

If you will take your New Testament you will 
find that three times we are told about the habits 
of Jesus. When He was twelve years old we 
read that according to His habit He ivent up to the 
feast at Jerusalem. When He became a full 
grown man He returned from His work to His 
own village at Nazareth and there according to 
His habit He entered into the little synagogue and 
took part in the service. Then near the close of 
His life we read that according to His habit He 
went out into the Mount of Olives to pray. These 
were Jesus’ habits. He had good home habits, 
good church habits and good prayer habits. Take 
your Bible and find the verses where these habits 
of Jesus are spoken of. You will find them all 
in the Gospel of Luke. You will not find the 
word “habit” but the word “custom,” which 
means the same. And then sit down and count 
over your habits, and ask yourself if you have 
good church habits, good prayer habits, good study 
habits, for your habits are just yourself. 


XVII 

TRY—KEEP TRYING 

“Unto the end ’— Matt. 24:13 

Z ACCTLEUS! Did you ever hear of him? 
What do you know of him? Let us count 
up all the things we know about him. He 
was a Jew, but he was in the employ of the Roman 
government, and was thought of as a traitor to 
his country. Pie was rich, and had a fine house 
in the city of Jericho. He was a success in life, 
and was the chief man among the publicans or 
tax collectors. He was very small, and could not 
see over the heads of other people when in a crowd. 
He was anxious to see Jesus, so he pushed his 
way out of the crowd, climbed up a tree, and 
there he saw Jesus, and Jesus saw him, and they 
became friends. You remember the story. Zac- 
chseus when he found he could not see Jesus be¬ 
cause of the great crowd did not turn away and 
go home. He tried again, and overcame all ob¬ 
stacles and at last found himself with Jesus as 
his guest in his own house. 

The only way to succeed is to try. Even the 
birds and the cattle fail and try again, until they 
win. The beautiful salmon that swim in the great 
rivers and the beautiful trout that dart so quickly 
from stone to stone leap the rapids and falls of 
64 


TRY—KEEP TRYING 65 

the rivers and go up and up to the head waters 
where they make their homes. In a great rushing 
river with its seething currents, its spray and 
foam, you can see the great salmon again and 
again jump out of the water and make a flying 
leap up the rushing, roaring waterfall. Some 
fail, but others try and try again and when they 
win they rush far up the stream where they make 
their homes and lay their eggs. There are just 
two kinds of fish in the sea, swimmers and drift¬ 
ers, and there are just two kinds of people. There 
are those who drift with the current and do what 
every one else does, and there are those who direct 
their lives according to a purpose. 

Did you ever hear the proverb, “God helps 
those who help themselves,” which means that 
God gives aid to those who try? There is an 
interesting story about William Carey, the great 
missionary to India. You know he was a cobbler, 
and in his shop he had a map of the world and 
thought about the world and prayed for it, and 
at last God called him to go out to India as one 
of the first missionaries. He was a great man. 
His motto was: 

“Expect great things from God. 

Attempt great things for God.” 

He overcame many things by trying and he 
learned this great lesson in his early life. 

When he was a boy he was very ambitious and 
never permitted anything to beat him if he could 
help it. In his play as well as in his work he al- 


66 


TRY—KEEP TRYING 


ways wanted to succeed. There was a tree near 
his home that none of his boy friends had been 
able to climb. He was eager to climb that tree 
and tried and tried again but always failed. But 
he said, “It shall not beat me. I mean to climb 
that tree. ,, 

So every day he tried to climb the tree, but 
made no progress. One day, however, after tear¬ 
ing his clothes and scratching his legs he got more 
than half way up, when down he fell, all in a 
heap, and when he tried to get up he could not. 
His leg was broken. 

He was just a lad and he suffered a great deal. 
For six long weeks he lay on his little bed unable 
to get up. Then he began to walk around the 
house and soon he was out in the yard. What do 
you think he did ? Well, the first thing he did was 
to go to that very tree and try to climb it again 
and he did. He went to the top and down again 
and he was satisfied. 

That was the stuff out of which the great mis¬ 
sionary hero was made. Little wonder he is still 
remembered for the great work he did in India. 
It was the same talent to keep on and to try again 
that brought Zacchaeus face to face with Jesus. 
Let nothing keep you from Jesus, your best friend. 
Take for your motto the words of William Carey: 

“Expect great things from God. 

Attempt great things for God.” 


XVIII 

THE WORST PARASITE 

“Sin lieth at the door” —Gen. 4: 7 


I N the third chapter of Genesis sin is likened 
to a serpent, a sly, sneaking, subtle serpent, 
that slips into our garden and strikes us with 
its fangs. In the fourth chapter sin is likened 
unto a tiger that looks as if it were asleep on the 
door step, but is really waiting, crouched ready 
to spring in and destroy all that is in the house 
as soon as the door is opened. 

You know what a parasite is. It is something 
that feeds on others. It prowls around like a 
bandit and attacks others. All our diseases really 
come from little unseen parasites that get into our 
flesh and blood and live on our life. A parasite 
lies in wait at the doors of houses and nests and 
looks for a chance to enter and destroy. Well, 
sin is the worst of all parasites. 

Did you ever hear of a golden wasp? It is a 
very beautiful creature and gets itself up in ele¬ 
gant garments of green and gold and pink and 
purple. It goes about among the flowers and 
garden glories like a miniature humming bird. It 
does not look like a parasite, a thief, or a robber, 
but it is. It is a dangerous, though very attractive 
looking criminal. The golden wasp is just as 
67 


68 


THE WORST PARASITE 


lazy and as good-for-nothing as it is beautiful. 
It is a bandit and a brigand. It steals. It waits 
around at the door of the fly-hunting wasp, that 
has been off in the fields searching and toiling for 
food, and waits until it comes home with some 
dainty morsel for its children. The golden wasp 
cannot break into the house, for it is safely closed, 
and it does not know how to dig or work. So it 
waits its chance and when the fly-hunting wasp 
returns and opens the door the golden wasp like 
a sneak thief enters also and hides away in the 
back of the nest. When next year comes round 
the children of the fly-hunting wasp, for whom the 
house was built, are all gone, and instead the 
children of the golden wasp are in possession. 
The golden wasp’s grub devoured the grub so 
carefully housed by the fly-hunting wasp. What 
a criminal it is! 

The world is full of beautiful looking animals 
that are parasites and live on the life of others. 
A friend of mine passing along the highway one 
day heard a bird making a piteous noise. It kept 
flying to him and then back to the tree and he 
knew something was wrong. He stopped and fol¬ 
lowed the flying bird to the bushes and on the 
ground he saw a little bird. There was a thin 
streak of blood on its breast. He picked it up and 
with his handkerchief wiped away the blood stain, 
and was about to put it back in the nest when a 
great snake lifted its head from the nest. No 
wonder the mother bird was calling and crying. 
A snake was in her nest feeding upon the little 


THE WORST PARASITE 69 

birds. My friend watched the snake and won¬ 
dered how it had got into the nest, for it was 
many feet above the ground. He saw the snake 
crawl along the limb out to the farthest branch 
and there hanging by its tail, swung itself back 
and forth until it was able to touch a small tree 
into which it leaped. 

But it did not escape. He killed it, and you 
can see that snake in the Museum at Washington 
and Jefferson College. 

Sin is just a parasite coming like a Snake to 
bite, or like a wasp to sting, or like a tiger to de¬ 
stroy. There are two things for us to do. First, 
we must keep the door tightly closed, keep the 
entrance barred and bolted to all who seek to do 
us harm. This is what the Bible tells us to do, 
“Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are 
the issues of life. ,> 

Second, let us make God the keeper of our lives. 
He can keep us safely. The 121st Psalm is called 
“The Keeper’s Psalm,” and it has the promise 
“The Lord is thy keeper.” One of the great mis¬ 
sionaries of Africa said, “I have locked the door 
of my heart, and Jesus has the key.” That is the 
way of safety. 

“Except the Lord keep the city 
The watchman waketh but in vain.” 


XIX 


BE SOMEBODY 

v 7 will make you.” —Mark i : 17 

H IS first name was Leon. He was a poor 
French boy. When he left home his 
mother, who kept a little shop, said to 
him, “My boy, before you come back try to be 
somebody. ,, He went to Paris and studied hard. 
When other boys were loafing and smoking cig¬ 
arettes Leon was reading in his little attic in the 
Latin Quarter at Paris. He worked hard. He 
did become “somebody.” He became the first man 
in France. His name was Gambetta and when he 
died men said, “France has lost her greatest man.” 

It is wonderful how many men who began as 
“nobodies” really became “somebodies.” Of 
course, everything worth while begins that way. 
The great oak was once a tiny acorn. The mighty 
river was once a little brook. Jesus, the greatest 
of men, was once a carpenter. Take your Bible 
and see how many nobodies became somebodies. 

Who was Abraham ? He came out of a heathen 
land and his father worshipped idols, but he be¬ 
came the father of a great nation. Who was 
Joseph? He was the youngest son, and began 
life as a messenger boy and later was sold as a 
70 


BE SOMEBODY 


7i 


slave, but he became prime minister of Egypt. 
Who was Moses ? He was found in a basket, be¬ 
side the river Nile. He was the child of slaves, 
but he became the greatest statesman the world 
has ever known. 

Who was Ruth ? She was a heathen girl, born 
in Moab, but she became the great grandmother 
of King David and the sweetest woman in the 
Old Testament. Who was David? He was a 
shepherd lad, keeping his sheep around Bethlehem, 
but he became king of Israel. Who was Esther? 
She was a Jewish girl, an orphan, who became 
Queen of Persia, and one of the heroines of his¬ 
tory. 

Turn now to the New Testament. 

Who was John the Baptist? He was a “wil¬ 
derness” man, living in the desert, but he became 
the herald of Jesus the Saviour. 

Who was Mary ? She was an obscure maiden, 
living in the little village of Nazareth, but she 
became the mother of Jesus. 

Who were John, and James, and Peter and 
Andrew? They were fishermen, but now they 
belong to the glorious company of the Apostles. 

It matters little where we come from. It mat¬ 
ters a great deal where we are going. When 
Matthew Henry, the great Bible student, pro¬ 
posed marriage to the beautiful girl who later 
became his wife, her parents said “No. We know 
nothing about him. We do not even know where 
he came from.” She replied, “But I know where 
he is going, and I wish to go with him.” 


72 


BE SOMEBODY 


Now turn to history, ^sop, who wrote the 
wonderful stories we call Fables, was a slave. 

Robert Burns, the poet of Scotland, was a poor 
farmer's son. 

John Bunyan, who wrote “Pilgrim’s Progress/’ 
one of the greatest of books, was a tinker, a trav¬ 
elling tinker. 

Columbus—you know all about him—was a 
common sailor. 

Oliver Cromwell, who became the uncrowned 
king of England, was the son of a brewer. 

Benjamin Franklin, whom we all honour, was 
a printer. 

John Howard, the reformer, was born in the 
home of a carpenter. 

Samuel Johnson, the wise man of letters, was 
the son of a poor bookseller. 

Martin Luther was a miner’s son and played 
music on the street in a real “German band.” 

William Shakespeare was the son of a butcher, 
and William Wordsworth was a barber’s boy. 

They called Jesus the son of a carpenter, and 
thought that would explain Him, but it explained 
nothing. Jesus did begin life as a carpenter, but 
He became the Saviour of the World. There is 
a story in the Gospels that one day a poor sick 
woman, who did not wish to be seen, followed 
Jesus, touched the hem of His garments and was 
made well and strong. Jesus knew what she had 
done and turning around said, “Somebody touched 
me.” She had become strong and well by touch¬ 
ing Jesus. Peter and John and James and Mat- 


BE SOMEBODY 


73 

thew and Mary Magdalene all came in touch with 
Jesus, and from being “nobodies” they became 
“somebodies.” Jesus is the master and maker of 
men. To His early followers He said, “Come 
after me, and I will make you to become”—what? 

When He first met Simon He said, “Thou art 
Simon; thou shalt be called Peter.” The word 
Peter means “rock,” and Peter did become a rock¬ 
like man, a strong, courageous follower of Jesus. 
Everything depends on the end. The important 
thing about anything is the end. We want to 
know what a child or a man will “become” be¬ 
fore we pass judgment. The rough unpolished 
stone may become a beautiful diamond. A few 
notes may become a sweet song. A humble cot¬ 
tage may become a happy and radiant home. 
When Jesus was a carpenter He made good yokes 
for the oxen and built good houses and as Saviour 
He makes good boys and girls, good men and 
women. Let this then be our prayer: 

“Make me 

What I ought to be.” 


XX 

THE LACE AND THE SHOE 

“Mint, dill, and cummin .”— Matt. 23:23 

J ESUS did not always speak sweet words. 
Sometimes His words had a sting in them. 
Seven times in one chapter in the Gospels 
He said “Woe to you,” and He was speaking to 
the leaders of the church. 

Let us think of one of these “woes” of Jesus, 
He was speaking to the priests and scribes and 
Pharisees and He told them they were not a bit 
religious because they were putting little trifles 
in the place of important things. They were re¬ 
quired by their law to give God a tenth of all 
they owned, and they were careful to do so. They 
not only gave God a tenth of all their cattle, prop¬ 
erty, and grain, but they gave Him also a tenth 
of their “mint, dill, and cummin.” You know 
what mint is. Sometimes we call it “spearmint,” 
and sometimes “peppermint,” and sometimes just 
“mint.” Well, mint and dill and cummin are 
little herbs, used for flavouring vegetables or 
chewing gum and for medicine and these people 
were so anxious about these three tiny things and 
were forgetful of the three big things called 
“judgment, mercy and faith.” They were will- 
74 


THE LACE AND THE SHOE 


75 


mg to give God a tenth of everything but were 
unwilling to be true, to be kind, and to be gentle 
and loving to others. They were interested in 
little things. They forgot about the big things. 

The other day I took my rod and reel and went 
off to hunt for some speckled trout away up in 
the hills of Pennsylvania. Were you ever there? 
It is a wonderful place. The great hills rise al¬ 
most to the sky, and the little streams rush down 
the valleys in the springtime and there the most 
beautiful fish in the world play hide and seek with 
each other and with fishermen like myself. My 
brother and I had gone up to Kities to fish in 
Parker’s Run. We walked away up the valley 
about three miles, and there took off our shoes, 
and hid them under a log, and put on high rubber 
boots and then waded farther up the stream, per¬ 
haps three miles more. 

When we came back with the trout we were 
very tired and sat down on the log to change 
our big rubber boots for our more comfortable 
shoes. When we looked under the log there were 
only three shoes. One of mine was gone. It 
was a very lonely place, and there were no bur¬ 
glars or bandits around. We looked for the miss¬ 
ing shoe and found it some distance away. Some 
little animal, perhaps a porcupine, or groundhog 
or beaver, had found it and was carrying it off. 
It had scratched it a little and chewed the edges 
of the leather. The shoe was all right, but the 
interesting thing was that the lace was gone— 
gone completely. Either with its sharp toes, or 


76 THE LACE AND THE SHOE 

with its sharper teeth, the sly little thief had 
unloosed the lace, hole by hole, and no trace of 
it was left. I have often wondered what it 
wanted with the lace. Perhaps it wanted to 
make a swing, or hammock out of it, or to use 
it to hang one of the other little animals that 
stole things from its nest in the ground. Any¬ 
way it took the lace and left the shoe. That’s 
what these cold-hearted dry-as-dust priests were 
doing, too. They took the little thing and left 
the important thing and that is just like taking 
the lace and leaving the shoe. We often do the 
same thing. 

When we go to church, and listen to the word 
of God and the music, and the sermon and come 
away and talk about the soprano’s hat or the min¬ 
ister’s hands or the colour of the pipes of the 
organ, we are taking the lace and leaving the shoe. 
One Sunday a little lad said to me, “Father, that 
was a good sermon.” I said, “Did you like it?” 
“Yes,” he said, “but did you ever count the num¬ 
ber of pipes in the organ ?” He had got hold of 
the lace that time for sure, but then he was only a 
little fellow, and what can very little boys*do in 
church when the sermon is long and prosy but 
count the pipes in the organ or the buttons on the 
cushion in the pew ? 

When we read the Bible and instead of finding 
Jesus in it with His message of salvation and 
God’s wondrous love we are interested in what is 
the longest chapter and the shortest verse, and the 
numbers in the Book of Revelation or the wheels 


THE LACE AND THE SHOE 77 

of Ezekiel, we are getting hold of the lace and 
missing the shoe. Do you understand? 

When at home we are loved by our parents and 
everything is done for us, and we act mean and 
peevish, what are we doing but leaving the great 
fine things and running off with some selfish trifle. 
Jesus blamed the people to whom He said, “Woe,” 
for their neglect of the big things and not so much 
for their interest in little things. The best way 
is to take hold of both the little things and the 
big things. My little porcupine friend should 
have been off with both lace and shoe and made his 
nest for the winter out of them. 

“These (little things) things ye should have 
done,” said Jesus, “and not have left the (big 
\hings) other undone.” 


XXI 

MAKING BLACK WHITE 

“A clean thing out of an unclean ”— Job 14:4 

Y OU have heard of the “Bonny, bonny banks 
of Loch Lomond.” Loch Lomond is one 
of the most beautiful lakes in Scotland and 
there is a very pretty song that is sung about it, 
which says: 

Oh, you’ll take the high road 
And I’ll take the low road, 

And I’ll be in Scotland before you, 

But me and my true love 
Will never meet again 
On the bonny, bonny banks 
Of Loch Lomond.” 

Well, near Loch Lomond, on the mountainside 
there is a little lake called Fairy Loch. You know 
in Scotland loch means lake. If you look into 
the beautiful waters of this little lake you will see 
a great many colours. It looks as if the rainbow 
were playing in the water. The colouring, of 
course, comes from the strange tinted rocks and 
sands at the bottom, but that is not why it is 
called “Fairy Loch. ,, I will tell you why. 

A long, long time ago, when the land was full 
of fancies and fairies people found that the fairies 
played around this little lake and that many 
78 


MAKING BLACK WHITE 


79 


strange and wonderful things were found there. 
They discovered that when garments were left 
by the water’s edge they changed to a different 
colour, and that if they left something to be dyed, 
and a thread beside it showing what colour was 
wanted next morning the garment was changed 
into that very colour. One night a shepherd left 
on the edge of this little mountain lake the fleece 
of a black sheep and beside it he put a white 
woollen thread to show that he wished the black 
dyed white. The fairies were at their wits’ end. 
They could dye a white fleece black, or even red, 
or blue, or yellow, but they did not know how to 
change a black fleece into a white one, and in their 
despair they threw fleece, thread and all their col¬ 
ours into the lake and from that time on the lake 
has been called Fairy Loch and the water has a 
rainbow appearance. That is a very pretty story 
and it helps us to understand how difficult it is 
to make a black thing white. Job asked the ques¬ 
tion, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an un¬ 
clean?” which is the same as saying, “Who can 
make a black thing white ?” 

Sometimes we can do it. Queen Victoria once 
went to see a great paper mill, and there she saw 
dirty and filthy looking rags. Then she saw the 
men take those rags and wash and clean them and 
make them into pure clean white paper. After 
she got home she received a beautiful box of fine 
white stationery, all engraved with her name. 
That was making black things white, and bringing 
a clean thing out of an unclean. 


80 MAKING BLACK WHITE 

Sometimes nature can do it. You remember 
Hercules, the strong man of Greece, turned the 
waters of the rivers Alpheus and Peneus into the 
foul and dirty stables of Augeas, king of Elis, and 
made them pure and clean and fresh in a single 
day. But sometimes neither man nor nature can 
bring a clean thing out of an unclean or make 
black white. Who can make a black heart white? 
Who can make unclean thoughts clean? Who 
can change dark desires into pure Christlike pur¬ 
poses? Only God can. God can change black 
into white and so we pray: 

“Create in me a clean heart, O God.” 

Only God can cleanse us and make our hearts 
white and pure. He tells us that though our sins 
be as scarlet they shall be white as snow, though 
they be red like crimson they shall be as wool. 
When those who had been redeemed were seen 
the question was asked, “These that are arrayed in 
white robes, who are they and whence came 
they?” and the answer was given: 

“These are they that come out of the preat tribulation, 
and they washed their robes, and made them white in the 
blood of the Lamb.” 

God can do what men and nature and all the 
fairies in the world cannot do. He can make a 
black thing white and can bring a clean thing out 
of an unclean. 


XXII 

A FRIENDLY WORLD 

'Ye are my friends.” —John 15:14 


W HAT a friendly world this is! Some¬ 
times we think it is a hard, cruel, selfish 
world, but it is not. It is a friendly 
world, full of friendly folk, who are looking 
around for love and friendship and happiness. 

The world is just like a mirror. It reflects our 
moods. We ourselves make the image that we 
see in the glass. There is a little lake I know, 
lying in the woods far up in the Canadian wilder¬ 
ness, and there you hear the echo of every noise 
you make. If you are rowing a boat, you think 
you hear some one else keeping stroke with you. 
If you sing, you hear some one else singing. If 
you shout and scold the fish that has gotten away 
from you, some one else scolds and talks loud. 
That is just the way with the world. We live in 
a sort of echo-world and as we speak and think 
and act, so we are answered back. 

One very hot summer day I was in the city 
of Cleveland. It was so hot that people were 
cross and I noticed a sign at the hotel desk which 
read, “Keep your temper, no one here wants it.” 
It was a wise word to tired and irritable travellers. 
The city was filled with delegates from all over 
81 


82 


A FRIENDLY WORLD 


the country, who were attending a convention, 
and the streets were thronged. 

In that hot and hurried city I came on three 
friendly things. The first was a little kitten, 
asleep behind the window of a barber shop. It 
was a little grey kitten, with little spots of white 
on each foot, on its nose and at the end of its 
tail. It was lying in the sun, asleep with its 
head resting on one of its front feet, just like a 
little child lying asleep with its arm under its 
head, and its hand over its eyes. It was very 
pretty and a lot of people gathered in front of 
the window and smiled and talked together about 
the little kitten with its head pillowed on its arm, 
as it were. I walked up to the public square and 
saw a young woman standing in the midst of 
about a hundred pigeons. They were perched on 
her head, her shoulders, and were eating some 
grain out of her hands and from the ground near 
by. She had come there to feed them because 
she loved them and they were unafraid. Then, 
best of all, I came upon a fine “black beauty” po¬ 
lice horse. There was no policeman to be seen, 
so there was nothing to fear. The horse was 
standing with his front feet away up on the side¬ 
walk, as if looking in on the turtles and alligators 
playing in the city fountain. But that was not 
what he was doing. I soon found that out. He 
was a friendly horse and wanted to talk to the 
folks as they passed. Old ladies came and patted 
his nose. Old men came and scratched his fore¬ 
head. He seemed to like that. Little children 


A FRIENDLY WORLD 


83 

came and looked into his big open eyes. Girls 
came and pulled his ears, and a big boy after put¬ 
ting his arm around his neck and whispering some¬ 
thing in his ear put his hand in his pocket and 
pulled out a beautiful red apple and Mr. Black 
Beauty said “Thank you” and in two bites the 
apple was gone. 

Yes, this is a friendly world. But it is our 
own friendliness that makes it friendly. We get 
just what we give. Jesus came to make the world 
a friendly place. He spoke of the lilies of the 
field, and the birds of the air. He took the little 
children on His knee and was kind to all, to the 
poor, the blind, the sick, the sinful. To be like 
Jesus, we too must live the friendly life. And the 
laws of the friendly life are given in these simple 
but great words of Jesus: 

“Blessed are the poor in spirit: 

“Blessed are they that mourn: 

“Blessed are the meek: 

“Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after right¬ 
eousness. 

“Blessed are the merciful: 

“Blessed are the pure in heart: 

“Blessed are the peacemakers." 

These are the laws of the friendly life. 


XXIII 
FOR SALE 

“Why was not this sold?” —John 12: 5 

J UDAS believed everything in the world was 
for sale. Jesus had come to the home of 
Mary of Bethany and it was only six days 
before the day of the Cross, and Mary wished to 
do something to show her love for her Master. 
In our day we send flowers and fruit, but in those 
days they gave beautiful fragrant perfumes. 
Mary had bought the choicest perfume money 
could buy—a whole pound of it—and had bathed 
her Lord’s weary feet with it. It was very fra¬ 
grant and the whole house was filled with the 
sweetness of the odour of it. Judas was shocked. 
He did not care about beauty or fragrance or 
love. All he thought of was money, money, 
money. So he said, “Why was not this ointment 
sold for 300 shillings and given to the poor?” 
and then John, who tells the story adds, “Now this 
he said not because he cared for the poor; but 
because he was a thief and having the bag took 
away what was put therein.” Judas thought 
everything was for sale, and at the end he even 
sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. 

Passing along the highway from Cleveland to 
Buffalo not long ago it looked as if everything 
was for sale. In towns, out in the country, in 
84 


FOR SALE 


85 

front of farms, houses, stores, shops, one saw the 
sign “For Sale.” Everything seemed to be for 
sale: 


“Honey for Sale.” 

“Eggs for Sale.” 

“Chickens for Sale.” 

“Little Pigs for Sale.” 

“Cherries for Sale.” 

“Strawberries for Sale.” 

“New Peas for Sale.” 

“This House for Sale.’ 

“Gasoline for Sale.” 

“Trees for Sale.” 

“Fresh Flowers for Sale.” 

“Lots for Sale.” 

Then I came to a railway crossing and lying be¬ 
side the road was an automobile. It was all 
smashed and had burned until only the frame was 
left. I stopped and asked what had happened. 
A passing train had crashed into the automobile, 
two children were dead, and the father and mother 
were in the hospital and as I journeyed on I met 
the signs: 

“This Barn for Sale.” 

“Vegetables for Sale.” 

“Packed Lunches for Sale.” 

I seemed to see another sign “Life for Sale.” 
Of course, there was no such sign, but I just 
seemed to see it. Once upon a time they did sell 
“lives.” They bought and sold little children and 
men and women at so many dollars apiece. That 
was in the days of slavery, and that was a dread¬ 
ful thing to do. Then I thought of the two little 
children whose lives had been “sold” to the de- 


86 


FOR SALE 


mand for speed, and to carelessness on the part 
of those who permit dangerous crossings on great 
public highways. Every such crossing ought to 
have a sign in red letters “Life for Sale Here. ,, 
Whenever we have dangerous streets, dangerous 
water, dangerous theatres, where life is held 
cheap, there we should have a sign “Life for Sale 
Here.” 

Not very long ago a teacher in a boys’ school 
asked each one in the class to write down what 
were the ten greatest of all inventions. One boy 
handed in his paper and said “I’ve written down 
one that is the greatest of all inventions. There 
isn’t anything can touch it.” When the teacher 
opened the boy’s paper he found there these ten in¬ 
ventions : steam engine, steam whistle, sewing 
machine, telephone, telegraph, radio, airship, spec¬ 
tacles, automobile, compass, and last and in big 
letters “Man—Invented by God.” The lad was 
right. Human life is the greatest of all things in 
the world, and everything ought to be made safe 
for little children, and for fathers and mothers, 
so that the world will be a safe place for them 
to live in. Jesus spoke hard words about those 
who harmed or hurt the life of a little child. And 
you can harm or hurt the mind and heart of a little 
child as well as you can harm his body. Jesus 
said: 


“But whoso shall cause one of these little ones 
that believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for 
him that a great millstone should be hanged about 
his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth 
of the sea.” 


XXIV 

THE WORST THING IN THE WORLD 

“Gashmu saith it” —Neh. 6:6 


I N the days of Nehemiah there was a terrible 
gossip by the name of Gashmu. All we know 
of him is that he was a gossip. He told 
everything he knew, and a lot of things he did 
not know. For a gossip is a pedlar, a pedlar of 
news, old news and new news, true news and false 
news, news about every one and news that is told 
with a wink of the eye and a shrug of the shoulder. 

I think gossip is the worst thing in the world. 
It is bad enough for a girl to gossip and perhaps 
it is nearly as bad for a woman, but when a man 
or a boy gets to be a gossip, he is both a nuisance 
and a knave. This man Gashmu tried to stop 
Nehemiah from rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem 
by peddling stories about him, saying he was a 
traitor and a rebel, and reporting to the people 
and to the king that Nehemiah instead of being a 
God-fearing, praying man was selfish and proud 
and wanted to be a king. When Nehemiah heard 
about all of Gashmu’s gossiping ways he sent 
him a message which was plain and easily under¬ 
stood. He said to him, ‘‘There are no such things 
done as thou sayest but thou feignest them out 
87 


88 WORST THING IN THE WORLD 


of thine own heart.” That is to say, he made 
the stories up out of lies. 

That is a terrible thing to do. Nothing will 
destroy the peace of a home or the happiness of 
a heart more quickly than mean stories that are 
not true. One of the greatest women America 
ever knew told her girls that before they told a 
story about any one they should pass it through 
three test questions: 

Is it true? 

Is it kind? 

Is it necessary? 

No gossip would get past any two of these ques¬ 
tions. No gossip is ever kind or necessary and 
much of it is not true. 

There is an Italian tale to the effect that a peas¬ 
ant once confessed to an old and very kind priest 
that he had spread a bad story about a good man. 
The priest said to him. “You have done a very 
dreadful thing, and you must be punished for 
what you have done. This you must do. Take a 
sack of feathers and go to every house and yard 
in the town and drop one feather in each yard. Be 
careful not to miss a single house or yard. When 
you have finished come back to me.” The peas¬ 
ant thought he had gotten off with a light punish¬ 
ment and quickly he went through the village with 
his sack and in each yard he dropped one tiny 
feather. Then he returned to the priest and said, 
“I have finished my task.” “No,” said the old 


WORST THING IN THE WORLD 89 

priest, “you have not finished. Your task will 
not be done till you take your sack and go again 
to every yard in the village and collect every 
feather you have dropped and bring them all here 
to me.” The peasant was amazed and said, “I 
cannot do that. I could not do that if I were to 
live forever. Many of them have blown to the 
ends of the earth. It is impossible.’’ “That is 
true,” said the old priest, “so it is with gossip. 
It is easily dropped but words once spoken can 
never be gathered up again.” 

The people who heard Jesus speak “wondered 
at the gracious words which proceeded out of His 
mouth.” Jesus spoke gracious words. He 
warned us about using “idle” words. He said: 

“I say unto you, that every idle word that men 
shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the 
day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt 
be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be con¬ 
demned.” 

And remember that: 

“If you your lips 
Would save from slips 
Five things attend with care, 

Of whom you speak, 

To whom you speak, 

And how, and when, 

And where.” 


XXV 


THE EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD 

“Lest we drift” —Heb. 2: 1 

G UESS what is the easiest thing in the world. 
The easiest thing in the world is to drift. 
You do not need to do anything. You 
can just let yourself go, and you will be carried 
along. If you are in a crowd, you will be pushed 
forward or backwards. If you are out in a boat 
you will be carried along. You do not need to 
work or plan or pray. You can fold your arms 
and look up at the stars, or down at your toes 
and you will be swept along to—well, that de¬ 
pends. 

Let us think about it. 

There is a good kind of drifting! 

When Nansen tried to reach the far north with 
his ship he was beaten back and back until he 
pushed his boat into the polar current and the 
swift flowing ocean streams swept him on and on, 
without any great effort. His work was to keep 
in the current. That was a good way to drift. 
We, too, can guide our life into the current of 
God’s will and be carried along to our goal. That 
was how Paul lived. The winds of God filled his 
sail and carried him across the seas of this life 
into the heavenly harbour. But this way of liv- 
90 


EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD 91 


ing is not usually called drifting. That is not 
the right use of the word. 

There is a bad kind of drifting. 

Drifting is always bad when it means careless¬ 
ness in the midst of danger. In the fall of 1918, 
a great scow full of cement was being towed down 
the Niagara River. The tug towed it down nearer 
and nearer the Falls and then caught in the swift 
current it broke away and shot like an express 
train towards the Falls. Two men were on the 
scow and nothing could be done for them, and 
they were helpless. Every now and then the great 
swirling rapids heaved the great flat-bottomed 
boat up and down, swung it round and round and 
then sped it on its way. People along the shore 
watched and waited as the men on the boat waved 
in vain for help. A few more yards and they 
would be swept over the precipice. Suddenly the 
bow of the great scow rose up and as suddenly 
fell, and then stopped. It seemed as if a miracle 
had happened. There in the river, in the midst 
of the mad rush of waters the mighty thing stood, 
as if it were a rock. A line was shot from the 
land and then a rope was drawn across the rapids, 
and then a stronger rope, and across it the two 
men were brought in safety to the land. How 
glad and how amazed they were. They had been 
face to face with death and suddenly life and 
safety had come to them. 

The old scow is still there, battling against the 
rapids. In winter the great ice floes beat upon it 
but it remains in the river bed, immovable, and 


92 EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD 

year by year people wonder at it, and say that 
it rests upon a great solid rock. But it is very 
unsafe. Some day it will be gone. Some day 
the rapids will beat it to pieces, and like a mass 
of rubbish it will be swept over the cataract and 
be seen no more. People think they are safe be¬ 
cause for a few years they are able to withstand 
the current and in the face of danger escape, but 
the precipice is always in sight and the sweeping, 
swirling, struggling waters are never still. 

The easiest thing in the world is to drift. Sam¬ 
son, whom we call the strongest man that ever 
lived, drifted into ease and pleasure and sin and 
did not know that he was slipping from the place 
of safety until he was caught in the swift flowing 
rapids and carried down to death. We read of 
him that “he wist not that his strength had de¬ 
parted from him.” 

Don’t Drift. 

Don’t Drift into Easy Ways. 

Don’t Drift into Careless Ways. 

Don’t Drift into Dangerous Ways. 

Don’t Drift into Vulgar Ways. 

Don’t Drift into Selfish Ways. 

Don’t Drift away from Home. 

Don’t Drift away from Church. 

Don’t Drift away from Prayer. 

Don’t Drift away from God. 


DON’T DRIFT! 



XXVI 

DEAD SPOTS 

“These are spots .”— Jude 12. 

I T would be foolish for me to explain anything 
to you about the radio and the wireless and 
the marvellous mystery of broadcasting music 
and speeches and messages through the air. You 
know more about all that than I do. That is to 
say, you know more about the wires and the tubes, 
and the phones, and the amplifiers and all those 
things, but perhaps there are some things you don’t 
know. Do you know that there are dead spots in 
the air? “Dead spots?” Yes, “dead spots.” 
What are “dead spots”? Well, dead spots are 
just dead spots. That is all I know about them. 
I thought the air would carry the voice anywhere, 
over mountains and valleys and forests and lakes 
and oceans. Not long ago I received a letter 
from a lighthouse keeper out in the Atlantic 
Ocean, off the coast of Nova Scotia and it told 
me how every Sunday the people on the little is¬ 
land gathered to hear the Sunday afternoon ser¬ 
vice broadcasted from the Shadyside Presbyterian 
Church, and asked me if our Choir would sing 
“Let the Lower Lights Be Burning.” After a 
while a letter came saying the message and the 
93 


94 


DEAD SPOTS 


music came through a storm over land and sea, 
right to the lighthouse. That is wonderful. It 
is strange. It is mysterious. 

But it seems the air does not carry the voice 
everywhere. There are “dead spots” in the ether, 
or the air, as we call it. No one really knows 
why or how these dead spots happen. They only 
know they exist. We are told there is a dead spot 
between Baltimore and Washington, and messages 
from one city to the other are lost. The people 
of Philadelphia have trouble hearing New York 
and Newark, and ship stations in Long Island 
Sound find it difficult to keep in touch with the 
shore stations out on the Atlantic side of the 
Island, only forty or fifty miles away, and the 
listeners at Atlantic City find it hard sometimes 
to pick up signals from New York, and I suppose 
there are many other regions where there are 
dead spots. 

No one has yet explained why there are these 
empty or dead regions. Something, however, in¬ 
terferes with the ether waves that carry the voice. 
Some have said that sand acts as a shield, and 
makes a dead spot. Others say that iron and 
other minerals in the earth deflect the messages 
while others have pointed out the influence of 
high powered wires and cables, but no one yet 
really knows. Some time we will find out and 
be able perhaps to overcome all such interferences 
and dead spots between stations. 

We are interested in all these radio novelties, 
but dead spots have always been in the world. 


DEAD SPOTS 


95 


Sometimes there is a dead spot in us, and we 
cannot signal right from one station to another. 
Here is a station we call our “will.” It is the 
power-house where we do things, and here is an¬ 
other station called our “intellect.” It is the 
power-house where things are learned and thought 
about and known, and there is often a dead spot 
between our knowing and our doing. We know 
what is right but we do not do it. This is what 
Saint Paul meant when he said: 

“For that which I do, I know not: for not what I would, 
that do I practise; but what I hate, that I do. But if 
what I would not, that I do, I consent unto the law that 
it is good. So now it is no more I that do it, but sin which 
dwelleth in me. For I know that in me, that is, in my 
flesh, dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with 
me, but to do that which is good is not. For the good 
which I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, 
that I practise.” 


Paul said the dead spot was caused by sin. 

There are many dead spots between the station 
I call myself and the station I call some one else. 
In the Book of Jude we read about “dead spots” 
in the feasts of those to whom he was writing. 
Some dark cloud had come between friends. Boys 
who ought to be friends are hindered because of 
some dead spot, and a girl has, as she says, “no 
use” for some other girl, because of something 
she cannot explain. These dead spots between 
boys and between girls and between men, are 
caused by selfishness, hatred, envy, jealousy, or 
by some other dark cloud of sin. Only love can 
overcome such empty spaces. 


96 


DEAD SPOTS 


“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one 
another. No man hath beheld God at any time: if we love 
one another, God abideth in us, and His love is perfected 
in us.” 

Sometimes there is a dead spot between the sta¬ 
tion which I call myself and the station I call 
God. We find it hard to speak with God, and we 
find it difficult to catch God’s signals to us. You 
know what I mean, for prayer is very much like 
“speaking into the air,” and when we find it hard 
to pray it is as if we had come upon a dead spot. 
Dead spots are caused by carelessness, or neglect, 
or worldliness, or sin, or wrong thoughts of oth¬ 
ers. When Leonardo da Vinci was working on 
his great painting “The Last Supper” it is said 
he painted the face of a man he hated as Judas. 
When he came to paint the face of Jesus he could 
not do it. He tried and tried again and failed. 
Then he remembered why and painting out the 
face of the man he hated, and putting another 
face in its place he was able to see the face of 
Jesus so clearly that he painted him more beauti¬ 
fully than he had dreamed he could. A wrong 
thought, a wrong feeling, a wrong act, makes a 
dead spot between God and us. Now turn to 
Isaiah, the first chapter, verses fifteen, sixteen, 
seventeen and eighteen, and read: 

“And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine 
eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will 
not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make 
you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before 
mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek justice, 
relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the 
widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith Je- 


DEAD SPOTS 


97 


hovah: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as 
white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they 
shall be as wool.” 

When we are right with God, and with one an¬ 
other, and right with ourselves, then the “dead 
spots” disappear, and we hear clearly the mes¬ 
sages we should hear. 

Away up in a lonely spot near North Bay in 
Canada, painted on a big boulder, in large red 
letters, I came upon the words: 

“Get right with God.” 

It startled me, for I did not expect to come face 
to face with a sermon in such a place, but that 
is a sermon which is always worth hearing and 
worth preaching, only I would change one word 
Instead of saying “Get right with God” I would 
say, “Keep right with God.” 

Keep right with God. 

Keep right with one another. 

Keep right with yourself. 


XXVII 

CATS AND CLOVER 

“No man liveth to himself !’—Rom. 14: 7 

D ID you know that Saint John once led 
Saint Peter into trouble? This was the 
way it happened. When Jesus was ar¬ 
rested by the Roman soldiers and led away to 
the high priest Peter fled in fear. John, too, at 
first kept at a safe distance but later came to the 
palace of the high priest. John was known at 
the high priest’s palace and he entered to see what 
would happen to Jesus. Meanwhile Peter came 
out of love and curiosity and stood outside the 
door. Somehow he got word to John that he 
was there and then John went out and spoke to 
the maid at the door who because of her regard 
for John allowed Peter to enter. You know what 
happened to Peter in the palace of the high priest. 
He was led to deny that he knew Jesus. He 
openly cursed and swore that he was not one of 
Jesus’ disciples and when Jesus looked at him in 
love and pity Peter fled from the place in tears, 
a broken-hearted man. It was a bad thing John 
did for Peter when he gained for him an entrance 
to the palace of the high priest. It was Peter’s 
undoing. 

The fact is, we do not act alone. Everything 
98 


CATS AND CLOVER 99 

we do touches some one else. No one lives to 
himself. 

Did you ever hear the story of cats and clover ? 
It was a wise man by the name of Darwin who 
discovered that beautiful red and purple clover 
had something to do with black and grey and tan 
and all sorts of colored cats. And this was the 
way he found out this interesting secret. He 
covered a hundred red and purple clover tops with 
little bags of muslin and when the clover was ripe 
he found these covered clover tops had no seed. 
Then he found the other clover tops all had come 
to seed, and then he knew this was because the 
bumble bees which had carried pollen from flower 
to flower had fertilised the clover and that the 
clover tops that had been covered were not fer¬ 
tilised because the bumble bee avoided them. So 
you see clover depends on the bumble bee to 
bring it to seed. Then he found that the little 
baby children of the bumble bee were nursed in 
the ground in little tiny cradles and that the field 
mice hunted for them and ate them, so that the 
mice which killed the bees thereby harmed the 
clover. But he discovered the clover near the 
village was fertilised because the mice that de- 
troyed the baby bees were caught by the village 
cats and so the cats without knowing it, by killing 
the mice that killed the bees, helped the clover 
to come to seed. It all sounds a little like: 

“This is the farmer sowing his corn 
That kept the cock that crowed in the morn 
That waked the priest all shaven and shorn 
That married the man all tattered and torn 


IOO 


CATS AND CLOVER 


That kissed the maiden all forlorn 
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn 
That tossed the dog 
That worried the cat 
That killed the rat 
That ate the malt 

That lay in the house that Jack built.” 

The bees depend on the cats and the clover de¬ 
pends on the bees, and without knowing it they 
help or harm each other. The mice feed the 
cats, and the bees feed the clover and the clover 
feeds the sheep and the cows, and the sheep give 
wool and lamb chops and the cows give us milk 
and beef broth and shoe leather and other neces¬ 
sary things. 

What a strange world it is. No one lives to 
himself. We depend on one another. We either 
help or hurt each other. Like the ripples in the 
river one touches another, until the shore is 
reached. Andrew brought Peter to Jesus and 
Peter preached on the day of Pentecost and led 
three thousand to Jesus. A little boy gave his 
lunch to Andrew and Andrew gave it to Jesus 
and with it Jesus fed more than five thousand. 


XXVIII 
THE TIDE 

“But by my spirit ” —Zech. 4:6 

W ATER is very much like boys and girls. 

Think of the things water does and you 
will see what I mean. Water runs. 
Sometimes it runs faster than any boy can run. 
Water sings. We are told the river sings its 
way to the sea. Water is coloured by the country 
through which it flows. If it runs through rocks 
it is clear and crystal, but if it drains low land it 
is brown and muddy and boys and girls get to be 
very much like the place where they live. Water 
boils, and I have seen both boys and girls, big 
and little, boil and sputter and talk wild. Water 
rises and falls, and in some strange way boys 
and girls rise and fall, we scarcely know how. 
The falling and rising of the water in the ocean 
is called the tide. We say the tide ebbs and flows. 
Have you ever seen the tide go out and come in? 
When the tide comes in you can hear it swish and 
swish and then break on the shore and it covers 
the rocks and the bushes and fills the creeks and 
the rivers. When the tide goes out, or ebbs, as 
we say, it seems as if the great ocean were draw¬ 
ing back from the shore, farther and farther, 
101 


102 THE TIDE 

until the boats rest on the beach and the great 
shore line is bare. 

What a strange thing the tide is. We read that 
one of the old wise men of long ago, unable to 
explain the reason for the ebb and flow of the 
tide, at last in despair drowned himself in the 
sea. In a sort of way we know now that it is the 
moon that makes the tide. The moon is near the 
earth and pulls the earth towards itself. It pulls 
both the land and the water, but the water pulls 
easier and so the water ebbs and flows with the 
attractive power of the moon. Sometimes the 
water rises a few feet and sometimes, as in the 
Bay of Fundy, it rises fifty feet. 

There is nothing in our world so powerful, so 
strong, as the tide. It pushes back the shore line 
and washes away cliffs and covers islands. Years 
ago when they were building a great bridge over 
the East River in New York they found in the 
bed of the river where they wished to place one 
of the central piers, an old sunken ship. It was 
buried in the mud and would not budge. The 
strongest tug was chained to it, but it could not 
be moved. Then one of the engineers asked the 
tide to help him. He took a great flat bottomed 
scow and when the tide was out chained it to the 
old sunken ship. Then he sat down and waited. 
He waited for the tide to come in. Slowly the 
water rose, inch by inch, and the chains and cables 
strained and groaned as the water rose. Inch by 
inch the old boat in the mud rose until at last, 
under the mighty pulling of the tide, it was lifted 


THE TIDE 103 

out of the mud, and then hauled out of the way. 
The tide had done what man could not do. 

There are many things we cannot do. We can¬ 
not lift ourselves. We cannot save ourselves. 
But God can. God’s power is like the tide. When 
Moses was caught as in a trap he exclaimed, 
“Stand still, and see the salvation of God.” The 
Old Testament prophet told the people of his day 
who were trying and failing and trying again 
and failing that victory would come “not by 
might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the 
Lord of hosts.” When we lay hold of God’s 
love and God’s power, we are lifted out of our 
sin and selfishness into love and life and into 
the liberty of the children of God. 


XXIX 

THE WATER WHEEL 

“A well of water.” —John 4:14 

Y EARS ago, back in the time of Queen Eliza¬ 
beth, there lived in Spain a beautiful 
woman by the name of Theresa. She is 
known to-day as Saint Theresa. She lived in a 
convent, enclosed with high walls, and inside the 
walls was a garden, and Theresa loved the garden 
with its flowers and trees and walks, but best of 
all she loved the old well in the garden. It was 
an old well and the water was lifted from the 
well by means of a wheel, to which were attached 
earthen vessels which dipped the water and lifted 
it up as the wheel turned. 

Theresa loved the garden with its flowering 
trees, its cypresses and vines, and the long deep 
shadows, but best of all she loved the old well. 
It was, cool there, and the light and shadows play¬ 
ing upon the surface of the silent water reflected 
her thoughts. 

She was not idle, for she loved work too well, 
and later travelled thousands of miles, and served 
as a missionary to the wild and cruel Moors. 
Meanwhile she was busy with her thoughts, and 
her thoughts were not about the garden and the 
104 


THE WATER WHEEL 


105 

water wheel only. She was thinking about God 
and faith and heaven and prayer, but most of all 
she was thinking about prayer. Her soul she 
said was a garden, and it was her task in life 
to have beautiful things growing there. But 
things will not grow in a garden without water 
and things will not grow in the garden of the heart 
without prayer. 

And as she thought she came to know that there 
were four ways of watering the garden and there 
were also four ways of bringing forth beauty in 
the garden of the soul. 

First, we can draw water with our own hands 
out of the deep well. In the same way, we can 
by effort, by churchgoing, Bible reading, and 
“saying” prayers, find refreshment for the flowers 
and fruit of the spirit. 

Second, we can draw water by means of the 
water wheel. This is an easier and better way. 
So we may in moments of quiet devotion find 
the sweet influence of God working in our hearts. 

Third, we can water our garden by means of 
an overflowing well that of itself will irrigate 
the soil. This was what Jesus promised when 
He said, “The water that I shall give him shall 
become in him a well of water springing up unto 
eternal life.” This is a fountain within our own 
souls that overflows into all our life and causes 
the garden flowers of love and sweetness to bloom. 

Fourth, and best of all, said Theresa, the gar¬ 
den may be watered by the rain from heaven. 
Sometimes God himself blesses us we know not 


io6 


THE WATER WHEEL 


how. He comes and brings with Him life and 
light and the beauty of His peace. 

What a wonderful woman Theresa was, and 
how she loved to talk and walk in the garden 
with God, and how happy she was to discover 
the secret of her own peace not in the garden of 
the convent, but in the garden of her own soul. 
There is an old story of a Scotch nobleman who 
was driven inside his castle walls by the enemy, 
who sought to starve him out. Months passed 
and one day a bunch of fine fish, fresh from the 
sea, was hanging from the castle window. Then 
the enemy knew that there was a secret passage 
from the castle to the sea, and that those within 
had an unfailing source of supply. This was 
what Jesus meant when He said to the Samaritan 
woman at Jacob’s well, looking down into the 
deep, dark well : 

“Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again: 
but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him 
shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall 
become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal 
life.” 


XXX 

FINDING THE WAY 

“The asses are lost ”—i Sam. 9: 3 

I T is wonderful how birds and animals find 
their way. They do not have a compass, 
but they pick their way as if they knew ex¬ 
actly where to go and what to do. When Saul 
was a young man, before he became king of Israel, 
his father sent him to find some asses which had 
strayed from the farm and lost their way. Saul 
in company with a servant started out to find 
them. We are not told how long they were gone, 
but we are told they were gone so long that Saul’s 
father began to worry over his son more than he 
had worried over the lost asses and in the end the 
asses came home themselves, and Saul found a 
kingdom instead. That is a way with all wild 
and tame things of the woods and the fields. They 
know how to find their way home. Is not that 
what the nursery rhyme says: 

“Little Bo-peep has lost her sheep 
And doesn’t know where to find them, 

Let them alone, and they’ll come home 
Wagging their tails behind them.” 

That wise man of France—Fabre—who knows 
all about birds and bees, once took forty mason 
107 


108 FINDING THE WAY 

wasps and began marking them with chalk and 
mucilage so he would know them. It was hard 
work marking the wasps and before he was done 
twenty of them were either hurt or had disap¬ 
peared, and he had left twenty good and sound 
mason wasps well marked. He took these twenty 
wasps three miles from home and had his little 
daughter watch the nest from which he had taken 
them. There was a high wind blowing when he 
let them free three miles from their home, but 
they started off, “straight as a bee” we say, and 
in a little while fifteen had arrived back in their 
own old home laden with honey. He does not 
say what became of the other five. I suppose they 
found other companions along the way and an¬ 
other nest. It is a wonderful instinct for direction 
which animals and bees and birds have. There 
is a verse in the Bible which says: 

“Yea, the stork in the heavens knoweth her appointed 
times; and the turtledove and the swallow and the crane 
observe the time of their coming; but my people know not 
the law of Jehovah.” 

Why is it that God’s people do not know the 
way to God? Many folks get lost on the way. 
They fall into danger, run into dark places, get 
among bad companions and forget about God, 
who is their true home. “God is our refuge.” 
Sometimes birds in their long flights get lost and 
hundreds of them perish in the cold. We do not 
know what happens to the birds when they miss 
their way, but we know why boys and girls get 
out of the true path. It is because of sin. Sin 


FINDING THE WAY 109 

disturbs our sense of direction. Sin, as we would 
say, “deflects the compass.” 

A ship was once wrecked on the coast of Ire¬ 
land. No one was to blame, for the captain was 
very careful and the weather had been good. But 
the ship went down off the rocks and after the 
disaster a diver was sent down to see if the trouble 
could be discovered. The diver brought up the 
compass and it was found that it was not true. 
When it was examined they found in it a little 
piece of steel, the point of a blade of a knife. The 
day before the wreck one of the crew, while 
cleaning the compass, broke off the point of the 
blade, and it had done all the damage. It had 
“deflected the compass,” and the ship with some 
of its crew and all of its cargo had gone down. 

A great man, whose name was Augustine, once 
said, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and 
our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.” We 
should be able to find our way to God as naturally 
as wasps find their nest or the sheep their fold, 
or the cattle their shelter and we would if sin did 
not disturb our sense of direction and lead us out 
of the way. Let us keep our hearts with all dili¬ 
gence, for out of them are the issues of life. Let 
us be pure in heart, for the pure in heart shall 
see God. 


XXXI 

AFRAID OF THE ZEAL 

r The zeal of thine house —Ps. 69:9 


T HEODORE ROOSEVELT was a brave 
man. It is hard to think he was ever 
afraid of anything. He was a soldier. 
He was a rough rider. He was a hunter of wild 
beasts in Africa. He was an explorer and nearly 
lost his life tracing the River of Doubt. But once 
he was afraid. Once he was so afraid that he re¬ 
membered it all his life and liked to tell about it. 

This is what happened. When he was a boy he 
played in Madison Square in New York City. It 
was not such a busy place as it is now, with its 
automobiles and busses and street cars and taxis 
and tall skyscrapers. There were no taxis, no 
autos, no busses, no skyscrapers then, and he used 
to play hide and seek among the trees and bushes 
of the park and around the Presbyterian Church. 
He was interested in the Church, and one Sat¬ 
urday when it was open and the sexton was work¬ 
ing around and getting it ready for Sunday, Theo¬ 
dore stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the 
towers and windows and in through the door. 
The sexton knew him and said, “Step inside and 
look around, lad,” but he drew away and said, 
“No, thank you, but I know what you’ve got in 
no 


AFRAID OF THE ZEAL 


hi 


there.” The sexton was amused and said, “What 
do you think I have in there?” “Oh, I know,” 
said Theodore, “I know what you have.” The 
old man looked at the boy with a smile and said, 
“There is nothing in here. Step inside and look.” 
But Theodore would not step inside, and as the 
sexton came to lead him into the church Theodore 
turned and ran for home three blocks away. 

He told his mother what had happened, for he 
was afraid, and his mother said, “Why did you 
not go in the church when you were invited?” 
Theodore said, “No, I don’t want to go into the 
church. They have a ‘zeal’ in there,” and his eyes 
opeped wide, for he had pictures of a dragon, or 
an alligator, or some other dreadful animal. 
“What on earth do you mean?” said his mother, 
and then Theodore told her that when he was at 
that church some Sundays before the minister 
had read and spoken about the “zeal” in the church 
which would eat people, and his mother remem¬ 
bered that the minister’s text that day had been 
“The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.” And 
then his mother had a good laugh. 

Lest you do not know let me tell you what that 
word “zeal” means. Jesus when he went up to 
Jerusalem found the temple of God filled with 
oxen, sheep, and doves, and men who bought and 
sold. Jesus was angry, for God’s house is not a 
marketplace, but a place of prayer, so He took a 
piece of rope and drove the men and the animals 
headlong from the Temple, and the disciples as 
they watched Jesus remembered the words of one 


112 


AFRAID OF THE ZEAL 


of the Psalms, “The zeal of thine house hath eaten 
me up,” which means that love for God’s house 
had mastered him, love for God’s house had cap¬ 
tured his heart. 

In a certain way, too, love for God’s house pos¬ 
sessed Theodore Roosevelt and once he wrote 
down the reasons why everybody, big and little, 
rich and poor, old and young, should go to church, 
and these are his nine reasons: 

1. In this actual world, a churchless com¬ 
munity, a community where men have abandoned 
and scoffed at or ignored their religious needs, is 
a community on the rapid down grade. 

2. Church work and church attendance mean 
the cultivation of the habit of feeling some respon¬ 
sibility for others. 

3. There are enough holidays for most of us. 
Sundays differ from other holidays in the fact 
that there are fifty-two of them every year— 
therefore on Sundays go to church. 

4. Yes, I know all the excuses. I know that 
one can worship the Creator in a grove of trees, 
or by a running brook, or in a man’s own house, 
just as well as in a church. But I also know, as 
a matter of cold fact, the average man does not 
thus worship. 

5. He may not hear a good sermon at church. 
He will hear a sermon by a good man who, with 
his good wife, is engaged all the week in making 
hard lives a little easier. 

6. He will listen to and take part in reading 


AFRAID OF THE ZEAL 113 

some beautiful passages from the Bible. And 
if he is not familiar with the Bible, he has suf¬ 
fered a loss. 

7. He will take part in singing some good 
hymns. 

8. He will meet and nod or speak to good, quiet 
neighbours. He will come away feeling a little 
more charitable toward all the world, even to¬ 
ward those excessively foolish young men who 
regard churchgoing as a soft performance. 

9. I advocate a man's joining in church work 
for the sake of showing his faith by his work. 

It is a good thing to have a burning love for 
God’s house and I hope you will not be afraid of 
zeal, but that you will be afraid of carelessness, 
and lack of interest in the things and house of 
God. 


XXXII 

THE HIDDEN SPRING 

“A well of water.” —Gen. 21:19 

I N the early chapters of the Bible there is a 
story of a little boy who with his mother 
was driven from his home. Together they 
wandered in the wilderness, without friends or 
home, and sometimes were without food or water. 
There seemed to be no hope, and the mother put 
the little boy under a shrub and went off so she 
would not see him die. But God heard the little 
lad’s cry and opened his mother’s eyes and be¬ 
hold, near by she saw a well of water, so they were 
refreshed and went on their way to a new home 
where the boy grew into a great man. His name 
was Ishmael, and his mother’s name was Hagar. 

Springs of water are often hidden. I re¬ 
member fishing in one of the beautiful inland lakes 
of northern Ontario, a few miles from the Mag- 
netawan River. It was a shallow lake, and the 
shore was full of long weeds and water lilies and 
the water was dark and unpleasant to drink. My 
brother who was with me, and who had been there 
before, said he knew where there was a spring. 
So we lifted anchor and started for the tree he 
pointed out on the farther shore. When we 


THE HIDDEN SPRING 


ii 5 

landed he said, “It ought to be here/’ but no spring 
could be seen. We wandered around trying to 
discover a tiny stream of spring water. Then 
we listened, but no sign or sound of running water 
could we find. At last we came to a little opening 
in the weeds, and my brother said, “It must be 
here.” But the place looked very uninviting. The 
ground was covered with rotted leaves and dark 
green moss and the water of the lake made a 
green line along the edge. But we stooped down 
and began with our hands to scrape away the 
leaves and moss and weeds. Then something hap¬ 
pened. When we cleared away the leaves and 
the moss and the broken twigs, and gouged out a 
hole in the clean, cool sand underneath, a little 
tiny stream of cool, clear water began to trickle 
into it, and it was soon filled with the purest of 
cold spring water. No one could mistake it. It 
was crystal clear and as cold as if it came out of 
the rock in winter. There it flowed under the 
leaves and the rubbish, and lost itself in the waters 
of the lake. 

It is a parable. 

The sweetest springs are often found in un¬ 
likely places. 

In the dark days of sorrow we often find a 
spring of joy. 

In the hard days when work must be done and 
lessons learned we find in action a spring of re¬ 
freshment. 

On the long, long road we find a spring where 
we may rest and find strength. 


n6 THE HIDDEN SPRING 

God often opens our eyes and we see “a well 
of water” in the desert. 

We find goodness, and joy, and blessing where 
we least expect it. This is what God promises to 
do. He promises that “in the wilderness shall 
waters break out, and streams in the desert. And 
the glowing sand shall become a pool and the 
thirsty ground springs of water.” 

Watch for the Hidden Spring. 

It is sure to be near by. 

It is for you to find. 


XXXIII 

AN EASTER STORY-SERMON 

“He is risen —Matt. 28:6 

E ASTER always comes with Spring. This 
is very interesting for Spring is just like 
a resurrection. After the dark cold win¬ 
ter, when trees and flowers all seem to die, then 
Spring comes and the birds return, the trees re¬ 
vive, flowers bloom and life everywhere reveals 
itself. 

Spring is a time of joy, and so is Easter. It 
is a time for happy hearts and cheery songs. The 
Easter chimes ring and call all little children to 
rejoice because Christ the Lord is risen. Spring, 
too, is a time to watch and work. Spring tells 
us that the time for sowing has come. If we miss 
the seed time, there will be no harvest. In the 
same way Easter tells us that this life is the seed 
time and that the harvest will come by and by. 
The Bible tells us that he that soweth to the flesh 
shall reap death, but he that soweth to the spirit 
shall reap life—life everlasting. 

Easter then speaks to us of seed sowing, of op¬ 
portunity, of responsibility, of the need to take 
care, and to live as expecting the coming harvest. 
Let me show you what that means. 

One of the first and greatest of modern Chris¬ 
tian missionaries was Robert Moffat. He went 


n8 AN EASTER STORY-SERMON 


to Africa and preached the Gospel to black slaves 
and savages of that great continent. Once when 
he was far from his mission station he visited an 
old and famous chief, Macaba by name. He was 
a great chief, a mighty warrior. He had fought 
many battles and had killed thousands of men, 
women, and little innocent children. His friends 
tried to keep the missionary from visiting the 
old savage chief, but Dr. Moffat was fearless and 
knew that God would keep him and help him 
preach the Gospel even to the chief. 

Macaba received him kindly and placed him 
in the centre of fifty or sixty of his head-men and 
warriors, and waited for the missionary to speak. 
Dr. Moffat told them the simple story of Jesus, 
and when he came to the Easter story the old 
chief stood up, all excited, and said: 

“What, what are those words about the dead? 
The dead arise, you say?” 

“Yes,” said Dr. Moffat, “Jesus rose and all the 
dead shall rise.” 

“Will my father rise?” 

“Yes,” said the missionary. 

“Will all those who have been eaten by lions, 
tigers, crocodiles, rise?” 

“Yes,” said Dr. Moffat. “They shall rise and 
come to judgment.” 

“Will all those killed in battle rise?” 

“Yes, and they will receive justice.” 

Turning to his warriors Macaba said, “Did you 
ever hear such words ?” 

“Never,” they said. 


AN EASTER STORY-SERMON 119 

Then the old chief, frightened, put his hand 
on the missionary’s shoulder, and said: “Father, 
I love you much. Your visit has made my heart 
white like milk. The words of your mouth are 
sweet like honey. But these words of a resur¬ 
rection must not be spoken again. I do not wish 
to hear any more about the dead rising. The 
dead cannot rise. They shall not rise.” 

“Tell me, my friend,” said the missionary, “why 
I must not speak of the resurrection.” 

Lifting up his arm, which had been strong in 
battle, and shaking his hand, as if grasping a 
spear, the chief said, “I have slain thousands, and 
they must not rise again.” 

The old chief had sowed the seeds of murder 
and hate and war, and was afraid of the harvest. 

Yes, Easter tells us that our life is like Spring. 
It is a time for sowing seed. Let us see that we 
sow good seed. 

Let us sow love, not hate. 


XXXIV 

THE RAVENS 

“I have commanded the ravens .”—i Kings 17:4 

S OMETIMES we use the birds for messen¬ 
gers. One Sunday morning when I was 
speaking to the children about “Home” I 
let two carrier pigeons out of the church window 
with messages, and they went straight home over 
the hills of Pittsburgh, and over the Allegheny 
River to their own home. 

Sometimes God uses birds for messengers. Do 
you remember Elijah? He was one of the great 
heroes of the Bible times. He belonged to God’s 
out of doors, and was afraid of no man, not even 
the king. The king was wicked and so was the 
queen, and God sent Elijah to them with a mes¬ 
sage. It was a strange message. Elijah told 
Ahab, the king, and Jezebel, the queen, that be¬ 
cause of their wickedness there would be no rain 
for three and a half years. That was a terrible 
thing, for it meant famine and distress, and know¬ 
ing this Elijah fled and though the king tried to 
find him and had his armies search for him all 
over the country he could not be found. 

And this was the reason. God chose his hid¬ 
ing place. It was in a wild place, near the Jor¬ 
dan, beside a little brook called Cherith, and God 
120 


THE RAVENS 


121 


commanded the ravens to feed him, and so “the 
ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morn¬ 
ing, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he 
drank of the brook.” I have often wondered why 
God asked the ravens to serve Elijah. Why did 
he not ask the blue jay or the red bird, or the 
crane, or the swift flying swallow? The raven is 
such a strange old bird. It has a harsh voice, like 
a man, and is sort of savage and boisterous. But 
I think I know why God used the raven and not 
the crane or the sparrow. The raven is a wise 
bird. It is the wisest of all the birds. How do I 
know? Well, I know just because I know. It is 
wise because it always gets married, and it takes 
a wife for life. It keeps up the same home, the 
same nest year after year, and so lives longer than 
almost any other bird. Then it is wise in the ways 
of other birds. It can mimic the songs of other 
birds and the cries of animals. If you could listen 
to it in the evening you would hear it, sort of 
singing itself to sleep, crooning over the events 
of the day, talking about everything it has seen 
or heard and you would hear it giving a bit of 
the barking of a dog, and the bleating of a sheep, 
and the lowing of a cow. Yes, the raven is a 
wise old bird, and knows how to keep a secret 
and to keep guard over its task. That is why God 
used it. He needed wisdom and shrewdness and 
sense and so Ahab and Jezebel never found out 
where Elijah was in hiding and Elijah never 
wanted for bread. God needs wise messengers. 
When He sent out His disciples as missionaries 


122 


THE RAVENS 


He said, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in 
the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as ser¬ 
pents, and harmless as doves.” 

God needs wise fathers and wise mothers and 
wise boys and wise girls. Hugh Price Hughes 
was one of the greatest of Gospel preachers. He 
was studying to be a lawyer when God called him 
to be a minister. So he wrote his father a very 
short letter. This was what he wrote: “My dear 
father, I think I ought to become a Christian min¬ 
ister. Your affectionate son.” He had a wise 
father, a very wise father, and this was the letter 
his wise father sent him, “My dear boy, I would 
rather you should be a Christian minister than 
to be Lord Chancellor of England. Your af¬ 
fectionate father.” 

God needs wise messengers. 

If he had more wise fathers and wise mothers 
we would have more wise ministers. 

Yes, God needs wise messengers. 

That is perhaps why God used the ravens. 


XXXV 

OLD FOLKS AND TREES 

“How old art thou?” —Gen. 47:8 

T HAT was the first question Pharaoh, king 
of Egypt, asked Jacob. Joseph, you re¬ 
member, brought his father down to 
Egypt during the famine and presented him to 
the king. The first thing the king said was, “How 
old art thou ?” We would never think of saying 
an impolite thing like that. We keep away from 
all questions about age. The first thing we would 
say would be something like this, “My, how young 
you look! I thought to see an old man, but you 
are as young looking as your son Joseph.” 

But we have queer ideas about age. The people 
of Jacob’s time considered age honourable and the 
older a man was the more he was proud of it. 
That was the way Jacob felt and he was proud 
of his age, and was ashamed he was not older, 
so he said to the king, “The days of the years 
of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years: 
few and evil have been the days of the years of 
my life, and they have not attained unto the days 
of the years of the life of my fathers in the days 
of their pilgrimage.” 

Jacob’s father had lived till he was one hundred 
123 


124 


OLD FOLKS AND TREES ' 


and seventy five, and Jacob had lived only a hun¬ 
dred and thirty. That seems a long life. We have 
no men living as long as that now. Rarely do we 
see a person reach ninety, much less a hundred 
years. There are plenty of things that live longer 
and perhaps that is why trees have been connected 
with worship and religion. That is why trees 
are our friends. They are here when we come 
and they remain after we go. Jesus, you remem¬ 
ber, loved the trees. Among the olive trees of 
the Garden of Gethsemane he kept tryst with God 
and the angels. When every one deserted him 
and left him the trees seemed to understand him, 
and one of our American poets has written these 
beautiful words about Jesus and the trees: 

“Into the woods my Master went, 

Clean forspent, forspent. 

Into the woods my Master came, 

Forspent with love and shame. 

But the olives they were not blind to Him, 

The little grey leaves were kind to Him: 

The thorn-tree had a mind to Him 
When into the woods He came.” 

Do you know how to tell the age of a tree? If 
you cut through a tree trunk and look at the end 
you will see that it is covered with a lot of tiny 
circles which you can count. Each ring means a 
year. You can count the rings because there is a 
difference in the growth of the tree in summer and 
in winter. Each ring means a year’s growth and 
so the rings, as the years go by, spread like rip¬ 
ples on the water. The big trees called the se¬ 
quoias have as many as 2425 rings which means 


OLD FOLKS AND TREES 


125 


that these tree giants began to grow over five 
hundred years before Christ was born. In the 
same way we can tell the age of fish by their 
scales, and of rattlesnakes by their rattles and 
of cattle by their horns. 

But you cannot tell the age of a man or a woman 
that way. Indeed, you can’t tell it at all. When 
she is thirty she may look like twenty and when 
she is sixteen she may look like forty. You tell 
age by its wisdom, its sweetness, its quietness, its 
graciousness, and its charm. There are two things 
that should be said about old age. 

First, old age should be reverenced. Did you 
ever watch how people who love old trees care 
for them? They have the tree doctor come and 
watch them and sometimes give them medicine 
and sometimes operate on them to keep them in 
good health. And how much better is a man than 
a tree? When Jacob was introduced to Pharaoh, 
the king, he was treated with honour and respect. 
Let us reverence all old people, and by reverencing 
them I mean serve them and love them. How old 
are you? Six? Soon you will be sixteen and in 
a little while you will be sixty. 

Second, let us prepare for old age. That is 
a strange thing to say to boys and girls but it is 
the right thing to say. The Bible tells us to re¬ 
member our Creator in the days of our youth be¬ 
fore old age creeps on. All old folks were once 
little children and a happy childhood should mean 
a happy old age. The way to have a good old 
age is to have a good youth, for age and years 


126 OLD FOLKS AND TREES 

have nothing whatever to do with joy and good¬ 
ness and a happy heart. 

There is a story of an old monk who went out 
into the forest and there he listened to the singing 
of the birds. When he came back no one knew 
him and none remembered him. Then they looked 
for his name in the records and discovered that he 
had been gone for a hundred years. The beauty 
of the birds’ song had made the years seem like 
a moment. Years have nothing to do with good¬ 
ness. A thousand years in God’s sight is like a 
day. Be good and always be young. 


XXXVI 

A CHILD GOES TO CHURCH 

“Christ loved the church” —Eph. 5: 25 


T HE church should be the most beautiful 
place in all the world. I would like to 
see everything about the church beauti¬ 
ful. That was the way David the king felt about 
it. It was in his mind and heart to build a beau¬ 
tiful temple of God in Jerusalem. He knew it 
was not right even for the king to dwell in a 
beautiful house and permit the worship of God to 
be conducted in a tent. So he charged Solomon, 
his son, to build the Temple and to make it beauti¬ 
ful. This is what he said: “The house that is to 
be builded for Jehovah must be exceeding mag¬ 
nificent, of fame and of glory throughout all coun- 
tries. ,, 

So David prepared for the house of the Lord 
a hundred thousand talents of gold and a thousand 
thousand talents of silver, and of brass and iron 
without weight, and timber and stone, and the 
Temple became the most beautiful thing in the 
land. 

That is right. 

The church should be the most beautiful thing 
in the world because people see with their eyes 
as well as hear with their ears. The other day 
127 


128 A CHILD GOES TO CHURCH 


in a newspaper I came upon a story of how a little 
girl went to church. This is what she heard and 
saw there. 

First, all the people sing and then—they say 
“Our Father,” just as I do every day; 

It makes me feel so proud, because I, too, 

Know how to pray the words that Grown-Ups do. 
Right after that, four men march down the aisles— 
(My Uncle Joe is one: he always smiles 
On week-days—but on Sundays, what a change! 
Church seems to make him look so stern and strange!) 
They all pass silver plates, and each one there 
Must put in money, like you pay a fare. 

I carry my own purse, and when it’s time 
For me to pay, put in a brand-new dime. 

I like this part of church, but later, when 
The man in robes begins to talk, why then 
My thoughts, like birds, go flying anywhere— 

(But God, who lives here in this house, won’t care 
So long as I sit still). The sun shines through 
Three stained glass windows just above our pew; 

One of them shows a Shepherd with a lamb 
Cuddled close to his shoulder. Oh, I am 
So fond of him! Within that kind, strong arm 
No little lamb could ever come to harm. 

A lovely Lady in a queer blue gown 

From out the second window frame smiles down, 

Holding her Baby—’twould be great if He 

Should climb down from her lap and play with me! 

The middle picture is the best of all: 

A bearded Man, tall as my father’s tall— 

Stands underneath a great, big, spreading tree, 

And little children gather ’round His knee— 

They seem to talk together like dear friends— 

His face is beautiful. 

When service ends, 

The organ plays a lively tune, as though 
It meant to tell us “hurry up and go.” 

So everybody crowds to reach the door. 

But I turn back to look at them once more— 

The Shepherd and the Lady and the Man— 

And say good-bye as often as I can! 

Their eyes all follow me—they cannot speak— 

But church will be locked up a whole long week, 

And they’ll be lonely till next Sunday, when 
They know I’ll come to see them all again! 


A CHILD GOES TO CHURCH 129 

So you see what she saw was more important than 
what she heard. She did not understand the ser¬ 
mon but she did understand the church. What 
did she see? 

She saw three pictures. She saw a Shepherd 
who cared for the little lambs, and she knew that 
Jesus was the Good Shepherd and that she was 
one of the lambs of His fold. Then she saw a 
lovely mother and her little babe. The mother was 
Mary, and the little child was Jesus, and she knew 
that all the wonderful Christmas story was in 
the picture. And last and best of all she saw a 
wonderful Man, with little children like herself 
climbing on His knee and playing at His feet, 
and she knew that the wonderful Man was Jesus 
who said, “Suffer the little children to come unto 
me, and forbid them not: for to such belongeth 
the kingdom of God.” 

The church should be beautiful. 

It does not need to have wonderful windows. 

It is beautiful if Jesus is there. 


XXXVII 

PHARAOH’S PERFUME 

“Filled, with the odor .”— John 12:3 

T HERE is nothing that vanishes so quickly 
as perfume. Even when there are no 
young ladies around it disappears. It is 
like the passing of a breath of air. We travel 
along the road and catch a suggestion from a field 
of clover, or from a garden of flowers, and it 
is gone. “The grass withereth; the flower fad- 
eth.” That is why we keep perfume tightly 
sealed in glass bottles with close fitting glass stop¬ 
pers, so that the fragrance will be kept, as we 
say, from evaporating. 

Yet sometimes there is nothing that lasts as 
long as perfume. When the tomb of Tutankh¬ 
amen was discovered in Egypt, among the 
strange and interesting things found was a little 
pot which contained a hard gum-like something. 
When it was placed in the hot Egyptian sun it 
began to melt and it gave off a very faint but 
fragrant odour. Five hundred or more years be¬ 
fore the first Christmas day that little box of 
perfume had been placed in the sealed and strongly 
guarded tomb, and doubtless those who found it 
after its long rest in the dark sepulchre enjoyed 
130 


PHARAOH’S PERFUME 131 

the same odour that pleased and delighted Ankher- 
paten, the queen of Tutankhamen. 

I like to think about this old perfume with its 
fragrant sweetness, for it suggests the thought 
that after all, the sweet things are the things that 
last. Did they not find in one of the Egyptian 
tombs, years ago, a little jar of honey that, after 
the lapse of thirty centuries, kept its sweetness ? 
Paul tells us that all the great things of the world 
pass away. He tells us that knowledge and 
philosophy and languages all change and disap¬ 
pear, but three things last and abide. He tells us 
that faith lasts, and hope lasts and love lasts 
and the greatest of these is love. 

The other day I was in the office of a very rich 
and good man. People call him a millionaire, 
whatever that may mean. Well, what do you 
think he talked to me about? Not about money. 
There are plenty of rich men who never talk 
about money. Those who want to be rich usually 
talk about money. He did not talk to me about 
schools and colleges, although he gives away much 
money for schools and colleges. What was he 
thinking about? Well, he showed me a picture 
of his mother, and he talked to me a great deal 
about her. He is what you would call an old 
man, and has children and grandchildren of his 
own. His mother had died over fifty years ago, 
but her love was just as sweet and as fragrant 
as it ever was and it not only filled his speech to 
overflowing, but filled his heart and memory with 
its gracious and sweetening influence. Perfumes 


i 3 2 PHARAOH’S PERFUME 

that are made by capturing the sweetness and fra¬ 
grance of flowers soon vanish, but love abides 
forever. When Mary poured out her box of per¬ 
fume before Jesus the fragrance of it filled all 
the room, but that soon disappeared, but Mary’s 
love for Jesus is as sweet and wonderful to-day 
as when she showed her Lord how much she loved 
Him, and Jesus said: “Verily, I say unto you, 
wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the 
whole world, that also which this woman hath 
done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.” 

And this is the wonderful thing about the 
sweetness of love. To keep perfume made from 
flowers you must have it closely and carefully 
sealed. To keep the fragrant sweetness of love 
you must not seal it but scatter it. Think of that. 
Love like seed must be scattered. The Bible tells 
us that is what God does with His love. It is 
“shed abroad in our hearts” and fills the whole 
world with its fragrance. Yes, love keeps its 
sweetness longer than any perfume. 


XXXVIII 

THE BRAMBLE KING 

f Come thou and reign over us ”— Judges 9:14 


BIMELECH was a bad man. He had a 



good father and his name was Gideon. He 


it was who with three hundred men and 
with pitchers and lights drove the Midianites out 
of the land. Strange as it may seem, good man 
that he was, he had a bad son. Abimelech was 
as bad a boy as any boy could well be, and when 
he became a man he was a bad man. And this 
is what he did. After the death of his father he 
killed all the royal family, all his brothers, to the 
number of seventy, upon one stone, and made 
himself king. He thought he had killed every 
heir to the throne, but his brother Jotham escaped. 
Abimelech was not only bad and cruel, he was 
both empty in his head and empty in his heart, 
and Jotham, his escaped brother, knew it and 
one day he told this story about Abimelech. The 
story is a parable, or as we would say to-day, a 


fable. 


“One day,” he said, “all the trees of the forest 
came together to choose a king and they went 
first of all to the olive tree and said, ‘Be our king 
and reign over us/ But the olive tree said, I will 
not. Why should I leave my fatness wherewith 


134 


THE BRAMBLE KING 


by me they honour God and man, and go to wave 
to and fro over the trees ?’ Then they went to 
the fig tree, and said, ‘Be our king and reign over 
us,’ but the fig tree said, T will not. Why should 
I leave my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go 
to wave to and fro over the trees?’ Then they 
went to the vine which bore such beautiful clus¬ 
ters of grapes and said, ‘Be our king and reign 
over us,’ but the vine said, ‘I will not. Why 
should I leave my new wine, which cheereth God 
and man, and go to wave to and fro over the 
trees?’ So not being able to get a king from 
among the fine and fruitful trees of the woods 
they went to the mean and worthless bramble 
and said, ‘Come, be our king and reign over us,’ 
and the bramble said, ‘I will. Come and take 
refuge in my shade; and if not, let fire come out 
of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Leb¬ 
anon.’ ” In this very pretty parable Jotham told 
the people that instead of making a good man 
their king they had only chosen a “bramble king,” 
weak and useless. 

Sometimes we too choose a “bramble king.” 
Bad temper is a bramble king, and often we pass 
by gentleness and kindness and patience and give 
bad temper the first place and let it rule over our 
hearts. You know what I mean. A boy who 
gets angry when he ought to keep his temper and 
a girl who gets peevish and fretful when she 
ought to keep sweet puts the crown upon the head 
of a bramble king. 

Envy is a bramble king. Perhaps of all the 


THE BRAMBLE KING 


135 


bramble kings envy is the meanest and the worst. 
We are told that it was because of envy the priests 
delivered Jesus over to be crucified. Instead of 
placing the crown upon his head they placed it 
on the head of envy. It was because of envy 
that Cain slew his brother Abel. Envy leads to 
hatred and hatred leads to murder. In one of 
the verses in the Book of Proverbs—I wonder if 
you can find it—we have these words, “Wrath is 
cruel and anger is outrageous; but who is able to 
stand before envy?” 

Lying is a bramble king. It has many names, 
such as falsehood, deceit, hypocrisy. It is one 
of the worst tyrants in the world. If a boy will 
only tell the truth he will come out all right. If 
a girl will be absolutely honest, honest in what 
she says, and what she suggests, and what she 
writes, she will come to a good end. But if there 
is lying and deceit in any life there will in the end 
be ruin. That is as sure as anything can be sure. 
A lying beam in a bridge, or a lying stone in a 
wall means that sometime something will fall. 
Here is another wise word from the Book of 
Proverbs : 

“There are six ’lings which Jehovah hateth; 

Yea, seven which are an abomination unto him: 

Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, 

And hands that shed innocent blood; 

A heart that deviseth wicked purposes, 

Feet that are swift in running to mischief, 

A false witness that uttereth lies, 

And he that soweth discord among brethren.” 


136 THE BRAMBLE KING 

There is only one who is worthy to be crowned 
king of our lives. His name is Jesus. His reign 
is like the fruitful olive, and fig, and vine, and 
not like the useless bramble. When Pilate offered 
to free Jesus the people cried out, “We have no 
king but Caesar.” What a strange thing to say! 
This is what they should have said, and this is 
what we will say, “We have no king but Jesus. 
His name is Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, 
Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace.” He is 
our King and we will crown Him Lord of All. 


XXXIX 

A BOOK IN A TREE 

“Thy word have 1 hidden in my heart.” —Ps. 119:11 

W HO ever heard of a book in a tree? I 
mean inside the tree. Of course a book 
could easily be in the branches or on 
one of the limbs of the tree, but I am thinking of 
a book inside the tree, and so covered by the wood 
and the bark that you could never guess there was 
a book there. I do not mean a tree with a hole 
in it either, but a good live solid tree, sound at 
heart, with a book inside the growing wood. 

Well, I know of just that thing. It happened 
out in California where there are so many wonder¬ 
ful trees, and where nothing is too strange to have 
happened. A student by the name of Blockman 
was reading, and using as a back rest what is 
called a digger pine that was growing on his 
father's ranch in the Cathay Valley. The tree 
was a fine old favourite and had been a landmark 
for many years. Indian skulls and Indian objects 
of handicraft had been found near by, and people 
said the spot had been used long ago as a meeting 
place for Indian tribes. Plenty of people had sat 
under the pine tree and passed it by with a word 
of admiration, but had noticed nothing particular, 
but the young student became curious about a 
137 


A BOOK IN A TREE 


138 

sort of scar in the tree, and taking the blade of his 
knife took off a piece of bark and ran the blade 
into the tree. After a little probing there came out 
bits of paper, and then with the aid of a sharp ax 
he cut into the tree and found embedded in the 
tree a small leather covered Bible or prayer book 
which had been used as a book of devotion, and 
contained the date 1849. So since the middle of 
the nineteenth century the tree had had the little 
book in its keeping. It had doubtless been left 
in a notch cut in the tree, as on a little shelf, and 
the tree had grown around it and hidden it. 

It is a curious and interesting story, but a tree 
is no place for a Bible. It does no good to hide 
a Bible in a tree. There is a better place to hide 
the Bible than that. In one of the Psalms, in 
speaking of the Word of God the writer says, 
“Thy Word have I hid in my heart.” That’s the 
place to hide the Bible. We are told that Alex¬ 
ander the Great kept a beautiful copy of Homer’s 
poems in a costly casket which he had taken from 
Persia after his victory over King Darius. Darius 
had used it for his jewel box, but Alexander loved 
Homer better than any jewellery. It is fine to 
keep your favourite book in a fine box, or on a fine 
dresser, but there is a better place for the Bible 
than any box or dresser. It is in your heart. 
“How,” you ask, “can you hide the Bible in your 
heart?” Well, how do you hide anything in your 
heart? Everybody hides words and sounds and 
sights and faces and things in their hearts, and 
you can hide the words and messages and pictures 


A BOOK IN A TREE 


139 


and people of the Bible in your heart. You re¬ 
member Mary the mother of Jesus hid all His 
words and pondered them in her heart. That is 
the way to use the Bible. Not to admire it and 
place it in a fine case but to hide it away in your 
memory. Learn its words. Memorise its great 
texts. Get to know its stories so that if you were 
ever to be in a place where you could not have a 
Bible, or if all the Bibles in the world were lost, 
you would still have yours hidden in your heart. 


XL 

THE SONG THE SEA SINGS 

“The waves of the sea” —Isaiah 48: 18 

I N olden times, before the victrola, or the piano, 
or the saxophone, or the violin, or any of 
the hundred or more instruments came into 
use people had to find their music out in the wide, 
wide world. They listened to the deep, deep thun¬ 
der which was played by the storm, to the hum 
of the myriad hosts of insects, to the stringed in¬ 
struments made of reeds and rushes, to the rustle 
of the leaves, to the song of the morning stars, 
and to the music of the sea. 

How much sweeter is the song of the sea than 
the grinding music of the victrola! There is an 
old story which says that Orpheus, the great mu¬ 
sician of the classic world, lost his lyre in the sea, 
and the music we hear is just the playing of his 
harp, and there is another beautiful story, not 
quite so old, of a great golden organ that was 
the prize of an ancient monastery. It was famous 
throughout the land, and in foreign lands. It 
came to pass that the monastery was attacked by 
robbers who wished to remove its wealth and 
treasures to another land. The monks, however, 
were shrewd and not willing to let the organ fall 
into the robbers’ hands. They carried it to the 
sea near by and sank it in the deep water. There 
140 


THE SONG THE SEA SINGS 


141 

the golden organ still continues to play and to send 
forth its magical music, which is heard by all who 
listen to the waves of the sea. 

Of course that is only a fairy tale, but it has 
a meaning, for to the people of the Bible the sea 
always meant trouble and danger. In the Old 
Testament we read that the wicked are like the 
troubled sea that cannot rest, and in the last book 
of the New Testament we are told about heaven 
and it is said in that new world there will be no 
more sea, which means that trouble and sorrow 
will be at an end. 

The old organ singing under the sea, and the 
sea itself singing because of the trouble it has 
with winds and storms, and rocks and reefs, tells 
us that even though we have trouble and diffi¬ 
culties we too may sing. Most of the sweetest 
singing the world has heard has come because of 
sorrow. It was in exile that the most beautiful 
Psalms of the Bible were sung. When they were 
in prison, in the night, at midnight, Paul and 
Silas sang praises unto God, and the prisoners 
heard them, and the prison was opened and they 
were set free. It is good to sing when we are 
happy. It is better to sing when we are sad and 
wish to be happy, for everywhere and always we 
have a right to sing, for 


“God is our refuge and strength, 

A very present help in trouble. 

Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change, 
And though the mountains be shaken into the heart of 
the seas; 


142 THE SONG THE SEA SINGS 

Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, 

Though the mountains tremble with the swelling thereof.” 

“Be still and know that I am God.” 

This is why we are told over and over again to 
sing unto the Lord and here is the song I would 
like to have every boy and girl sing: 


“For the beauty of the earth; 

For the beauty of the skies, 

For the love which from our birth 
Over and around us lies; 

Lord of all, to Thee we raise 
This our hymn of grateful praise. 

“For the beauty of each hour 
Of the day and of the night, 

Hill and vale, and tree and flower, 
Sun and moon, and stars of light; 
Lord of all, to Thee we raise 
This our hymn of grateful praise. 

“For the joy of ear and eye, 

For the heart and mind’s delight, 
For the mystic harmony 

Linking sense to sound and sight; 
Lord of all, to Thee we raise 
This our hymn of grateful praise. 

“For the joy of human love, 

Brother, sister, parent, child, 
Friends on earth, and friends above, 
For all gentle thoughts and mild; 
Lord of all, to Thee we raise 
This our hymn of grateful praise.” 


XLI 

A TREE THAT TOLD A LIE 

“Nothing hut leaves .”— Matt. 21:19 


T HE fig tree of Palestine has figs first and 
after the fruit the leaves come. When 
Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem He 
saw on the hillside a fig tree, full of leaves, and 
lcnowing that the leaves were a promise of fruit 
He went forward to the tree, but found no fruit 
thereon. The tree had no fruit. It had only 
leaves. It told a lie. The presence of the leaves 
was a promise of fruit, and was an invitation to 
travellers to come and eat, but when He came 
the tree deceived him and was guilty of telling a 
falsehood, a lie. 

Jesus said the Jewish people were just like that 
tree. They promised to serve God and to bring 
forth the fruit of a faithful life, and instead they 
were useless and good for nothing and their na¬ 
tion brought forth nothing but leaves. They, too, 
told a lie just like the fig tree. 

There are a lot of things in the world that tell 
lies. 

Sometimes money tells a lie. Here is a notice 
from the Bank of Pittsburgh signed by my friend 
Alexander Dunbar which warns me about lying 
money. First he warns me about a fifty dollar Fed- 
143 


144 


A TREE THAT TOLD A LIE 


eral Reserve note, and gives the number and the 
signatures, and points out how it may be detected 
as false. This is what the warning says, “In por¬ 
trait of Grant white in the whiskers is too promi¬ 
nent, and a white spot appears over left eyebrow.” 
You see the lie is found out by very little things. 
That is the way with most lies. Second there is 
a warning about a $1000 Federal Reserve note, 
but since there is little chance of any of us boys 
and girls getting our hands on a $1000 bill we 
can pass that one by. 

Sometimes I imagine jewellery tells lies. Peo¬ 
ple to-day are making pearls and opals and sap¬ 
phires and diamonds, and it takes a real expert to 
tell the difference between true and false gems, 
but time tells the tale. The real jewel gets 
brighter and brighter as it gets older. The jewel 
that tells a lie soon loses its lustre and becomes 
like common glass. 

Let me tell you about some boys and girls that 
are like the fig tree. They have nothing but leaves. 

There is the girl who talks a great deal, but 
never does anything. She is always going to 
read, or sew, or study, or help around the house, 
but it all ends in talk. She is like the fig tree 
which had no fruit but leaves only. And here is 
a boy who is always busy at play and never works. 
He likes hearing it said that “All work and no 
play makes Jack a dull boy,” but he forgets that 
“All play and no work makes Jack a good for 
nothing boy.” 

Then there are both boys and girls, all around 


A TREE THAT TOLD A LIE 145 

us who live their lives, and receive from God the 
good things of life, and never pray. To live and 
never pray is like a fruit tree that has leaves but 
never has any fruit. A wise man once asked a 
question like this: ‘What is a man better than a 
sheep or a goat if he does not pray?” Could you 
answer that question? A prayerless life is like 
a fruit tree that bears nothing but leaves. All the 
great men of the Bible and of history have been 
men who prayed. 

Abraham prayed. His prayer was: 

“Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?’* 

Moses prayed. His prayer was: 

“Show me thy glory.” 

David prayed. His prayer was: 

“The Lord is my Shepherd.” 

Isaiah prayed. His prayer was: 

“Here am I. Send me.” 

Paul prayed. His prayer was : 

“Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? 

The Disciples prayed. Their prayer was: 

“Lord, save us! we perish!” 

Jesus prayed. His prayer was: 


‘Thy will, not mine, be done.’ 


146 A TREE THAT TOLD A LIE 

George Washington prayed at Valley Forge 
and God gave him America. 

Abraham Lincoln prayed during the Civil War, 
and God gave him courage and victory. 

President McKinley prayed and his last prayer 
was: 

“Nearer, My God, to Thee.” 

President Harding prayed and his prayer was: 

“Lead, Kindly Light.” 

A prayer may be a word, a hymn, a look, a 
verse, a sentence, a life. Do you pray? 


XLII 

A WHITE STONE 

“A white stone ” —Rev. 2:17 

S OME time ago, when attending the Com¬ 
mencement exercises at Blair Academy I 
listened to a very interesting talk by one of 
the boys. It was called an oration. An oration is 
something like a sermon, only it is much more 
serious. He was speaking about why boys go 
to school, and what is the best thing they get 
at school. 

He said there is a difference of opinion as to 
what is the best thing. You know schools and 
especially colleges give “a letter” to the students 
who excel. These letters are given sometimes 
to a boy for fine work done in study and some¬ 
times to a boy for fine work done in play. That 
sounds strange, I know. But in school and col¬ 
lege some boys work harder at play than they 
do at work. But they do not call it play. They 
call it athletics, such as football, baseball, basket¬ 
ball, running, jumping, and track. Well, this boy 
who was speaking said that schools vote as to 
which “letter” they would prefer to possess and 
some vote for letters given for “athletics,” or play, 
and some prefer the “letter” given for scholar¬ 
ship, or study. 


i47 


148 


A WHITE STONE 


Let me tell you how Theodore Roosevelt felt 
about it. You know he had a fine family of boys. 
One of them, the youngest, was killed in the Great 
War in France, and another son Kermit, was with 
him on his great trip through the River of Doubt 
in South America, where they both nearly lost 
their lives. When Kermit was a lad at school his 
father often wrote to him. Kermit was interested 
in the play side of school life and once, when he 
was disappointed in not gaining a prize his father 
wrote him this letter: 

Dear Kermit: 

I was very glad to get your letter. I am glad you are 
playing football. I should be very sorry to see either you 
or Ted devoting most of your attention to athletics, and I 
haven’t got any special ambition to see you shine overmuch 
in athletics at college, at least (if you go there), because 
I think it tends to take up too much time; but I do like 
to feel that you are manly and able to hold your own in 
rough hardy sports. I would rather have a boy of mine 
stand high in his studies than high in athletics, but I 
would a great deal rather have him show true manliness 
of character than show either intellectual or physical prow¬ 
ess, and I believe you and Ted both bid fair to develop 
just such a character. 

There! you will think this a dreadfully preaching letter! 

I suppose I have a natural tendency to preach just at pres¬ 
ent because I am overwhelmed with my work. I enjoy being 
President, and I like to do the work, and have my hand 
on the lever. But it is very worrying and puzzling, and 
I have to make up my mind to accept every kind of attack 
and misrepresentation. It is a great comfort to me to read 
the life and letters of Abraham Lincoln. I am more and 
more impressed every day, not only with the man’s wonder¬ 
ful power and sagacity, but with his literally endless 
patience, and at the same time his unflinching resolution. 

Your loving 

Father. 

You see there was something Mr. Roosevelt 
thought worth more than winning in sport or win- 


A WHITE STONE 


149 


ning in study. To win in the battle of life is bet¬ 
ter than even winning the battle with books. 
Character is the best thing to get at school. To 
be a fine strong Christian boy is a better thing 
than to be a good sport, or to be a good scholar, 
but of course the very best thing would be to 
be good in all three. Many boys have been 
good sports, good scholars, and good Chris¬ 
tians. 

In the last book of the Bible there is a story 
told of the prize given to the victor. It was given 
not to the one who won in school or on the track, 
or with the ball, but to the winner of life’s battle, 
to the one who was a victor over himself. And 
the story ends with these words, “To him that 
overcometh, to him will I give of the hidden 
manna, and I will give him a white stone, and 
upon the stone a new name written which no one 
knoweth but he that receiveth it.” This is the 
“letter,” the “mystery letter” which God gives 
to those who win the prize. It is a white stone 
with the letters of “a new name” engraved on it. 
In olden times people had as signets and seals 
jewels with their initials and perhaps this verse 
refers to this custom. Anyway the “letter” 
which God gives as the best prize of life is given 
not for scholarship, nor for sport, but for good¬ 
ness. The best thing in school or out in the world 
is to live a good life. At the close of the Com¬ 
mencement exercises Dr. Sharpe, the headmaster, 
asked the class that was graduating these five 
questions: 


A WHITE STONE 


150 


Are you afraid? 

Are you honest? 

Are you pure? 

Are you in earnest? 

Are you ready? 

Can you answer these five questions? 

After you have tried your hand and your 
heart answering these hard questions of the Head¬ 
master try your hand and your heart memorising 
these fine verses by Charles Kingsley, which he 
wrote for a little girl friend who asked him to 
write her a song. They tell the story of the 
“white stone.” 

My fairest child, I have no song to give you; 

No lark could pipe to skies so dull and grey; 

Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you 
For every day. 

I’ll tell you how to sing a clearer carol 
Than lark who hails the dawn or breezy down, 

To earn yourself a purer poet’s laurel 
Than Shakespeare’s crown. 

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; 

Do noble things, not dream them, all day long: 

And so make life, death, and that vast forever, 

One grand, sweet song. 


XLIII 


THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING IN THE 
WORLD 

“They shall see his face!’ —Rev. 22:4 

D O you think we would be able to agree 
about the most beautiful thing in the 
world? The world is full of beautiful 
things and men who look through the microscope 
and the telescope tell us we do not see a thou¬ 
sandth part of the beauty of the earth and sky 
with our naked eye. The world is more beautiful 
than we have ever dreamed. The stars and plan¬ 
ets are brought near by the great telescopes and 
little flowers, snow crystals, the tiny insects, the 
scales of fish, the sand on the sea shore, the dust 
of the street shine like jewels when looked at 
through the microscope. There is a story told 
of a man who loved to see beauty and he always 
carried a microscope with him. He was travelling 
in Scotland and was visiting friends in the heather 
hills. Did you ever see Scotch heather ? It grows 
wild in Scotland, out on the hills and on the moors, 
and is very beautiful. It has a little purple flower, 
and this great man of science was lying down 
upon the heather looking at a small heather bell 
in bloom. He looked at it long and lovingly and 
did not hear the sound of approaching feet and 


152 MOST BEAUTIFUL THING IN WORLD 

knew not that any one was near until a shadow 
passed across the glass. When he looked up an 
old Scotch shepherd with his dog was looking at 
him curiously, wondering what he was doing in 
that strange place, with that strange brass instru¬ 
ment. The man rose and told the shepherd to 
look. The old man lay down in the heather and 
was a long time looking through the microscope. 
When he rose tears were in his eyes and he said, 
“I never knew it was so beautiful, and to think 
that I have trodden so many under my heavy 
foot.” It was more beautiful than he had known. 

Well, that is the way with all things that grow. 
If we had eyes to see we would behold glory in 
every flower, in every weed, in every blade of 
grass, in every drop of dew, and we would say: 

“My God, I thank Thee, who hast made 
The earth so bright, 

So full of splendor and of joy, 

Beauty and light; 

So many glorious things are here, 

Noble and right.” 

But none of these things is the most beautiful 
thing in the world. I will tell you what is the 
most beautiful thing. It is the face of some one 
we love. It may be the face of a little child or 
of a girl, or a boy, or the fair face of your mother, 
or the strong face of your father, but I think of 
all the beautiful things you see the face of some 
one you love is the best. Artists tell us that the 
human face is the hardest of all hard things to 
paint. 


MOST BEAUTIFUL THING IN WORLD 153 

And among all beautiful faces the most beauti¬ 
ful of all is the face of Jesus. For many cen¬ 
turies artists have tried to paint their idea of the 
j face of Jesus, and not one has been satisfied. 
You have all seen such paintings. People go 
from all parts of the world to see Leonardo da 
Vinci’s painting of Jesus and His Disciples, which 
is to be seen in a little chapel in the city of Milan. 
One of the greatest of painters once painted a 
picture of Jesus in the midst of His twelve dis¬ 
ciples. This artist easily painted the faces of 
John and Peter and Judas and Thomas, and the 
other disciples, but when he began to paint the 
face of Jesus he failed. He could paint His hands, 
and his dress, and his hair, but he could not paint 
His face as he wished to do. It was more beau¬ 
tiful in his mind that his brush could make it. 
He tried again and again, but failed. The rest 
of the picture was all but perfect, but the face 
of Jesus was always appearing in his mind and 
then vanishing. At last he finished the picture 
and painted Jesus with a mantle thrown over His 
head, hiding His face. He thought when people 
looked upon the picture they could imagine what 
the face of Jesus ought to be better than he could 
paint it. 

The face of Jesus must have been very beauti¬ 
ful. When Peter betrayed his Lord, Jesus looked 
at Peter, and when Peter saw that one look he 
went out into the night to weep. Little children 
looked up into His face and then climbed upon 
His knee and were satisfied. There is one won- 


154 MOST BEAUTIFUL THING IN WORLD 

derful picture of Jesus in the Bible, and this is 
it: 


“And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And 
having turned I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the 
midst of the candlesticks one like unto a son of man, 
clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about 
at the breasts with a golden girdle. And his head and his 
hair were white as white wool, white as snow; and his 
eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto burnished 
brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace; and his voice 
as the voice of many waters.” 

The Bible promises that some day we shall not 
only see Him face to face, but we shall be like 
Him. There is only one way to be like Him and 
that is to love Him. When asked the secret of 
His beautiful life Charles Kingsley said, “I had 
a Friend.” His friend was Jesus. To be a friend 
of Jesus is to become like Him. 


XLIV 

LOST! 


“To save that which was lost.” —Luke 19:10 

T HE other day I was reading a newspaper. 

I was on the train and had nothing else 
to do, so I read everything in it, and was 
surprised to read the number of things people had 
lost the day before. Here are some of the things 
that had been lost: a beaded bag containing a 
lease, a bank book, another bank book, a stock 
certificate, three “briefs” lost by three absent- 
minded lawyers, a pair of tortoise rim glasses, a 
black grip, a handbag containing a bank book— 
it is wonderful how many bank books are lost— 
glasses, keys, watch, pen, money, a pocket book, 
a brooch with forty one diamonds—think of a 
brooch with forty one diamonds—a diamond pin, 
a ring, an emerald ring, an old heirloom, a vanity 
box—what is that ?—two rings, a pearl necklace, a 
circle brooch, a diamond bar pin, a sable neckpiece, 
sable fur scarf, a white pleated skirt—I suppose 
it was a new one—a German police dog, an Irish 
terrier, a Yorkshire terrier, a purse. It is all 
very interesting and I notice that the things are 
lost mostly by women. I wonder why? Perhaps 
you could answer. 


i55 


LOST! 


156 

And then, too, these are all little things. There 
is nothing lost in all this list that people could 
not get along without, such as dogs and rings and 
vanity boxes. They are all little things but some¬ 
times big things are lost, such as ships at sea. 
Thomas Arnold, the great headmaster of Rugby, 
was once asked to join a party that was going in 
search of lost treasure ships. This great man 
who loved boys said he did not need to go search¬ 
ing in the sea for lost treasure. He could find 
plenty of lost treasure right in his schoolroom. 
What do you think he meant? He meant that 
boys could become lost and that it was the busi¬ 
ness of his life to find them. Of course, boys 
can be lost. The Prodigal Son was a boy, and 
Jesus said of him that he was lost. Boys and 
girls are lost when they are not in the place they 
should be. 

Let me tell you a story. In the state of New 
York there is a monument erected where the battle 
of Burgoyne was fought. In the monument near 
the top there are niches where the figures of the 
men who fought in the War of Independence 
are given places of honour. One of these places is 
empty. A traveller looking at it one day said, 
“Why was the monument left unfinished and why 
is that niche empty ?” An old resident of the vil¬ 
lage looked at him in surprise and said, “The 
monument is not unfinished and the niche is 
empty because it is empty. That was the place 
that should have been filled by Benedict Arnold, 
who instead of being true to his country was 


LOST! 


157 

false and played the part of a traitor. His coun¬ 
try had a place of honour for him but he never 
filled it. He was a lost man.” 

Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you.” 
God has a place for each of us in His love and 
in His heavenly kingdom, and when we wander 
away from His love we are ‘‘lost.” How many 
are lost! To seek and to save the lost Jesus 
came into the world and suffered and died on the 
Cross. There is a place prepared for each one 
of us. Let us see that it is not empty. 


XLV 

SAY IT WITH FLOWERS 

‘By love serve one another —Gal. 5 : 


P EOPLE who sell flowers have a common 
motto. Their motto is, “Say it with flow¬ 
ers.” You know what it means. If you 
have a friend who is ill, or who is getting well, 
or who is going to be married, or “coming out,” 
or going away, or has a birthday, you can express 
to her your best wishes by sending her a bouquet 
of beautiful flowers which speaks the language 
of love and friendship. 

It is impossible to miss the meaning of the 
flowers. They are so bright and beautiful and 
fragrant. They are always giving, always say¬ 
ing lovely things, always sending forth sweet¬ 
ness. 

We would never think of sending flowers that 
are withered or fading. We send fresh flowers 
that are open in their loveliness. Sometimes flow¬ 
ers fade, sometimes they wither, sometimes they 
sleep, but a true flower is at its best when it is 
filled with fragrance and beauty. Have you ever 
seen a sleeping flower? There are some flowers 
that close up when the night comes on, there are 
flowers that close as the air cools and then open 
as the air gets warm again, there are some flow- 
158 


SAY IT WITH FLOWERS 159 

ers that have a sort of sleeping sickness, which 
causes them to curl up and hang their heads. 
They are put to sleep as it were by their own fra¬ 
grance and I was reading not long ago about a 
new anaesthetic which is being manufactured 
from such sleeping flowers. Ask your father 
what an “anaesthetic” is. 

But we do not send flowers that sleep and hang 
their heads to our friends. We send flowers that 
send forth fragrance, and reveal their beauty 
and tell the story of our friendship as long as 
they last. Flowers are just like love. Love is 
shown best when it gives and serves and helps. 
Love is service. Love speaks not merely in words 
but in acts. There is a little story about three 
children, a brother and two sisters, who each 
claimed to love their mother, and I suppose they 
did, but one loved her best of all, and this is the 
story: 

“I love you, mother,” said little John; 

Then, forgetting his work, his cap went on, 

And he was off to the garden swing, 

And left her wood and water to bring. 

“I love you, mother,” said rosy Nell; 

“I love you better than tongue can tell.” 

Then she teased and pouted full half a day, 

Till her mother rejoiced when she went to play. 

“I love you, mother,” said little Fan; 

“To-day I’ll help you all I can; 

How glad I am that school doesn’t keep!” 

So she rocked the baby till it fell asleep. 

Then stepping softly she fetched the broom; 

And swept the floor and tidied the room, 

Busy and happy all day was she, 

Helpful and happy as child can be. 


160 SAY IT WITH FLOWERS 

“I love you, mother,” again they said— 

Three little children going to bed. 

How do you think that mother guessed 
Which of them really loved her best? 

Love does things for others. It serves others. 
Jesus said, “If ye love me, ye will keep my com¬ 
mandments.Love always thinks of others. It 
is like God. “God so loved the world that He 
gave.” Love always gives. It is always awake. 
It never sleeps. It never fails. The finest thing 
said of Jesus was this: “Having loved his own 
that were in the world, he loved them unto the 
end.” 


XLVI 

THE SHANDAKEN TUNNEL 

“A river of water of life.” —Rev. 22:1 

A TUNNEL sometimes goes under a hill and 
through it trains and traffic pass. Some¬ 
times a tunnel is under a river and some¬ 
times through it, as, through the tunnel under 
the Hudson river great electric trains travel, tak¬ 
ing millions of people every year right into the 
heart of New York City. 

But I know another kind of tunnel. I know of 
a tunnel under a mountain, and through it passes 
not trains, or traffic of any kind, but a great flow¬ 
ing stream of fresh water. This tunnel is in the 
Catskill Mountains, and is eighteen miles long. 
They began to bore through the mountain in 1917. 
Two groups of workmen began on each side of the 
mountain and they each bored away every day, 
night and day, for more than five years, and one 
morning they met nearly half a mile under the 
mountain and the tunnel through the great hill 
was completed. 

That tunnel is called the Shandaken Tunnel, 
and through it there flows from the mountains 
250,000,000 gallons of fresh crystal clear water, 
which is carried right into the homes of the 
millions of rich and poor who live in the great 
161 


162 THE SHANDAKEN TUNNEL 

city of New York. I think that is one of the 
most wonderful things I know. In the hot, hot 
days of summer, those who live in alleys and 
slums and boulevards have cool fresh mountain 
water to drink. There could be no greater bless¬ 
ing than that. When the work was begun the 
committee in charge quoted the words of the 121st 
Psalm, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills 
from whence cometh my help.” 

But I know of a still more wonderful tunnel, 
only I do not know where it is, or how long it is, 
or whether it goes through mountains. I have 
an idea it runs through clouds and sunlight, past 
sun and stars and empties its crystal water at our 
very doors. I read about where it begins. It be¬ 
gins at God’s throne, and opens into this world 
of ours. Here is the story: 

“And he showed me a river of water of life, bright as 
crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the 
Lamb, in the midst of the street thereof. And on this side 
of the river and on that was the tree of life, bearing 
twelve manner of fruits, yielding its fruit every month: 
and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the 
nations.” 

This great stream of water which flows from out 
the throne of God is carried down to where we 
are, and every one who wishes may stoop down 
and drink. I think you know what that story 
means. The water of life is the love of God 
that comes to us through Jesus. It begins with 
God and comes down to earth and flows from 
Calvary and from the open Easter Tomb and 
every one who drinks of that water is satisfied. 


THE SHANDAKEN TUNNEL 163 

It flows past every door, and rich and poor, white 
and black, people of all lands, may drink and be 
content. Jesus often compared the Gospel to fresh 
water. He told the woman at Jacob’s well that 
every one who drank of the water of that well 
would thirst again but whosoever drank of the 
water He would give would never thirst. 

I heard the voice of Jesus say,— 

“Behold I freely give 

The living water; thirsty one 
Stoop down and drink and live!” 

I came to Jesus and I drank 
Of that life-giving stream; 

My thirst was quenched, my soul revived, 

And now I live in Him. 

There was plenty of water in the Catskill Moun¬ 
tains, but a tunnel had to be made before the little 
children in New York could use it. There was 
a boundless source of life and love in God, but 
a way had to be opened for it to flow to us, and 
this way was opened in Jesus. There is an un¬ 
failing source of supply of love and grace in the 
Gospel for all men, but it must be taken to the 
homes of those who have it not. Every mission¬ 
ary and Christian worker is like a tunnel through 
which flows the healing waters of the Gospel. Is 
your life like a tunnel? It is said that Oliver 
Cromwell, who was once the ruler of England, 
visited the Cathedral of York, and there he saw 
twelve statues of the Apostles in solid silver. 
“What are they doing there?” he asked. Then 
he said, “Take them down and let them go about 


164 THE SHANDAKEN TUNNEL 

like their Master doing good.” So they were 
taken down, melted, and turned into money to 
be of use in the world. Not everything that is 
beautiful should be turned into money and per¬ 
haps Oliver Cromwell might have left the silver 
statues in the Cathedral, but certainly every good 
Christian is not for ornament but for use, and 
should, like his Master, be in the world to do good. 
He should be a tunnel through which goodness 
and blessing flow, out into the world. 


XL VII 

SOWING AND REAPING 

“One soweth and another reapeth .”— John 4 : 37 

I F we would reap we must sow. If we are to 
reap others must have sowed seed for us. 
If others are to reap we too must sow seed 
for them. The trees under whose shade we sit 
were likely planted by hands we never knew. The 
wheat that we eat was sowed by people we shall 
never see. The Gospel we enjoy was preached by 
missionaries and ministers long since forgotten. 

For this is the wonderful thing about all life. 
It grows and multiplies. I was reading the other 
day about a certain flower called the spotted orchis. 
Each plant has 30 seed boxes, or pods, and in each 
pod there are some 6,200 seeds. If we were to 
allow 400 bad or useless seeds to each pod, then 
there would still be 174,000,000 seeds to each 
plant. This seed would sow an entire acre of 
land, and next year the seed from that acre would 
sow a whole state and the next year if all the seed 
gathered from the state were sowed again there 
would be enough to cover the whole earth. And 
this is the queer thing about seed. It will grow 
and multiply if it is bad as quickly as if it is good. 
Sometimes we think bad seed grows quicker. A 
165 


166 


SOWING AND REAPING 


little girl asked to tell the difference between a 
flower and a weed said, “A weed is what wants 
to grow and a flower is what does not want to 
grow.” Good seed and bad seed' will both bring 
forth a harvest, and the thing we must look after 
is to see that we sow only good seed and then we 
will reap a good harvest. 

Years and years ago over in Germany there 
was a farmer whose home was far in the woods. 
He was very poor and lived in a humble cottage 
with his wife and two little children, a boy and a 
girl. The boy’s name was Hans and of course 
the girl’s name was Gretel. One dark night in 
winter when the snow was lying deep in the woods 
and the wind was blowing and whistling around 
the cottage there was a tap, tap, tap, on one of 
the little windows and a voice was heard, “Oh, 
let me come in. I am so cold and so hungry. 
What shall I do? I have nowhere to go, and I 
am so cold.” Hans and Gretel ran quickly to the 
door, saying, “Come in, poor, poor little child, 
come in.” So they brought the little strange child 
into their warm home and gave him half their 
supper and put him to bed in their own little bed. 
Then Hans and Gretel lay down upon the hard 
floor satisfied that they had been kind to a poor 
lost child. Soon they were all fast asleep, for 
children do not lie awake. In the dark night 
Gretel sat up and shook Hans and said, “Listen, 
Hans. Listen to the sweet music.” Then Hans, 
too, sat up, and listened. It was the sweetest 
music they had ever heard. It sounded like 


SOWING AND REAPING 167 

sweet voices singing to the tones of a silver harp, 
and these were the words of the song: 

“O Holy Child, we greet Thee! 

With notes of love and praise. 

“O Holy Child, in peace sleep on, 

While o’er Thee we will watch till morn. 

“Blest be the home that welcomes Thee 
On it shall Heaven’s blessing be.” 

Then they remembered it was Christmas morning. 
A great light filled the room and going to the win¬ 
dow they saw the morning dawn in the sky, and 
in front of the cottage home a group of children 
all clothed in white, and playing upon harps of 
gold. They were so surprised that they could 
not speak, but turned to waken the little stranger, 
but when they looked the little lost child was stand¬ 
ing beside the bed, no longer dressed like a wan¬ 
derer, but clothed in purest white. “I am the 
Christ Child,” He said. “I wander through the 
world and bring happiness to all good children. 
Since you welcomed me last night, and gave me 
your own supper, and let me sleep in your bed, 
I will give you to eat of the Bread of Life and 
you shall never know cold or hunger again.” 
Then the music ceased, the children disappeared, 
and the little stranger was gone. But a great 
peace filled their hearts and their home seemed 
like heaven. 

Hans and Gretel had sown kindness and love, 
and had reaped a golden harvest of peace and joy. 


XL VIII 

LITTLE BROTHERS AND SISTERS 

“Behold the birds.”— Vatt. 6:26 

D ID you ever hear of St. Francis? He is 
known as “St. Francis of Assisi.” As¬ 
sisi was the place where he lived, and he 
is called a saint because he was a very, very good 
man. When he was young he was rich, and care¬ 
less and worldly, but he was led to give his life 
to Christ, and after that he lived as a poor man 
and went about doing good. Some one has said 
that St. Francis was the only true Christian that 
has ever lived. He was very kind and friendly 
to every one, especially to the poor and the sick, 
and made friends with birds and animals, and 
called them his “little brothers and sisters.” He 
would speak of my little brother the fox, and my 
little sister the lark. He spent much time in the 
woods and the fields, and learned to know how 
friendly is all wild life as we call it. 

The birds are very friendly little creatures. 
Did you ever think how friendly and familiar 
they are ? We call them by friendly names. There 
is the Daw, for example, and we call him Jack,— 
Jack Daw, just as if he were a well known friend. 
168 


LITTLE BROTHERS AND SISTERS 169 

Then there is the Redbreast, that is out after the 
early worm, and we call him Robin—Robin Red¬ 
breast we call him, just as if he belonged to the 
family. There is the little Wren, too, that wants 
to find a tiny hole in which to make a nest, and 
because she is so little and so friendly we call her 
Jenny—Jenny Wren. Then there is the Pie, and 
we call her Margaret—for short we say Mag, 
and Mag-pie is one of our rather curious friends 
who hangs around like a poor relation. But they 
are all friendly folk, and they are friendly with 
each other. The Bible tells us that there will 
come a time when even the lion and the lamb 
will lie down together, and love will be king over 
all. We read of owls living in the same house in 
the ground with prairie dogs and we have all 
seen a hen playing mother to ducks and turkeys 
and geese. I was reading not long ago of a man 
who watched a flock of birds. The birds flew on 
in a great flock, but three birds lingered behind. 
One of the three would lie for a long time in the 
grass, while the other two birds stood beside it. 
After a time it started to fly and the two birds 
flew, one on each side of it. Again it rested, and 
the two companion birds waited till it was ready 
to fly, and then again flew with it. The man who 
was a lover of birds discovered that the bird that 
rested so often had a broken leg, and the two 
kept it company, and helped it, until they were 
all able to rejoin the flock. The man who watched 
the birds was Mr. W. H. Hudson and the birds 
were what are known as military starlings. 


170 LITTLE BROTHERS AND SISTERS 

Jesus said that boys and girls are much better 
than sparrows or starlings or any kind of birds. 
And so they are, and they can show how much 
better they are than the birds by being kinder, 
friendlier, and more helpful than the birds. They 
can be like little brothers and sisters to each other. 
After the Great War was over two Austrian young 
men found themselves prisoners in Siberia. Si¬ 
beria is a terribly cold country, and they longed 
for home. During their life in prison they be¬ 
came great pals, and were like brothers to each 
other. One day news came that a certain number 
of prisoners were to be given their freedom, and 
were to sail on the last boat that would leave be¬ 
fore the winter closed the port. One of these two 
chums was selected to go and of course the other 
was compelled to remain. There was nothing 
to be done. Each man leaving was allowed to 
take one piece of baggage with him, and just one 
piece, no more. What do you think this friendly 
pal did? He left behind him all his clothes, and 
everything that belonged to him and rather than 
be separated from his friend he doubled him up 
as you would a jack-knife, sewed him up in 
canvas, and staggered aboard the ship with his 
friend as his only single and best possession. 
Surely this man thought of his chum as his 
brother. He was his friend, his keeper. 

When we bear the burdens of others we be¬ 
come their brothers. Once during the life of 
Jesus His mother and His brothers came to speak 
with Him. This is the story: „ 


LITTLE BROTHERS AND SISTERS 171 

And on e said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy 
brethren stand without, seeking to speak to thee. But he 
answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my 
mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched 
torth his hand towards his disciples, and said, Behold my 
mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will 
of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and 
sister, and mother.” 


We, too, can be the little brothers and sisters of 
Jesus by doing His will and serving those about 
us who are in need. 


XLIX 

WORK! 

"My Father worketh.” —John 5 : 17 

T HE world is a busy place. Some one has 
said that life is just one thing after an¬ 
other and love is just two things after 
each other. The world is a busy place. Every 
thing works. 

The birds work. They are busy from morn¬ 
ing to night. First they are busy with their nest. 
Then they are busy with their eggs. Then they 
are busy feeding their baby birds and then they 
are busy getting ready to move south for the win¬ 
ter. In a single nest a man counted 2379 little 
feathers. That pair of birds had made 2379 trips 
carrying little fluffy feathers with which to build 
a nice warm snug nest for their little children. 
Yes, birds work. 

And bees work. In a colony of 50,000 bees 
there are about 30,000 workers. Each one of 
these 30,000 working bees makes ten trips every 
flay. They go out after honey. In a single day 
these working bees visit 300,000 flowers, and 
when you remember that it takes 37,000 visits 
to make one pound of honey you can understand 
how hard the bees must work. 

Insects work. All sorts of flies and mosquitoes 
172 


WORK! 


173 

and bugs and spiders work. You remember about 
the spider Robert Bruce saw at work. Robert 
Bruce was king of Scotland, but he was in hiding 
from the enemy. He had failed and was sleeping 
one night in a friend’s barn. Early in the morn¬ 
ing he awoke and saw a spider trying to lay its 
silken cables and weave its web, but again and 
again it failed. At last it succeeded. Then Bruce 
rose from his bed in the straw and said, “If a 
spider can succeed after so many failures, so can 
I.” And he did. Yes, spiders work and all 
sorts of insects work. 

Beavers work. I have seen among the hills of 
Pennsylvania great trees which the beavers have 
cut down with their teeth. They cut them so 
the tree would fall across the stream and then 
they built a dam and made themselves a home. 
Do we not sometimes say that we have worked 
like a beaver? Yes, beavers work. 

Jesus himself was a great worker. When He 
was a boy He worked in the carpenter shop at 
Nazareth, and when He became a man He worked 
day and night. When His mother found Him in 
the temple He said to her, “Wist ye not that I 
must be about my father’s business?” Jesus was 
a worker. He worked every day in the week, 
and on Sundays, too. He worked at doing good. 

If you and I are to succeed we must work. We 
must work at our studies. We must work at our 
tasks. We must work at our religion. When 
Archbishop Temple was a boy he was much given 
to talking and arguing and one day, when he was 


174 


WORK! 


arguing with his mother about something she 
had asked him to do, she said, “Don’t argue, Fred¬ 
die, work.” He never forgot his mother’s words, 
and he did work, and working made a man of him. 

During the Revolution a corporal in the army 
was giving orders to a little squad of men who 
were raising a heavy timber to be used in build¬ 
ing a bridge. The men were not quite able to lift 
it. An officer not in military dress happened to 
pass and asked the corporal why he did not take 
hold and help. “I am a corporal,” he replied. 
Then the stranger came forward himself, gave a 
few orders and laid hold of the beam with the 
men and soon it was in place. Then mounting his 
horse he said with a smile, “Mr. Corporal, when 
you have another such job send for the com¬ 
mander-in-chief.” The stranger was General 
George Washington. He was not afraid to work. 

The Bible has a great deal to say about work. 
We are told to rest one day in seven, because six 
days we are to work. Jesus could not find time 
enough to do all he wished to do. He said, “We 
must work the works of him that sent me, while 
it is day: the night cometh, when no man can 
work.” And to all His followers Jesus says: 

“Go.” 

“Go work.” 

“Go work in My vineyard.” 


L 

SAFETY FIRST! 

“Beware!” —Matt. 10:17 

W E live in a very unsafe world. All 
around us we see signs, “Safety first. ,> 
Everywhere there is danger and even 
nature puts up her signals and bids birds and in¬ 
sects, cattle and sheep, beware! 

Safety first! Did you ever hear of the Venus 
fly trap? It is a plant which grows in the Caro- 
linas. It grows in among the bog moss and has 
leaves about an inch long. But the important 
thing about the Venus fly trap is three prominent 
bristles which stand out. They are the trap sig¬ 
nal, for the very instant a fly, or insect, or bug 
touches one of these bristles there is a quick action 
on the part of the plant, and the fly is caught just 
like a rat in a trap. It is a wonderful device. If 
you touch it with a piece of paper the trap will 
clap together. You can do it a second time, and 
the trap will close, but if you do it the third time 
the plant fooled twice will pay no attention to you. 
The world is full of traps in which little creatures 
that do not watch are caught. The spider’s web 
is another trap, and there are holes and snares and 
baits always prepared for the unwary. 

i75 




SAFETY FIRST! 


176 

Safety first! Did you ever hear of the electric 
eel? You know there are nearly fifty different 
kind of fish that have some sort of electric appa¬ 
ratus about them. The most interesting is the 
electric eel. It has its home around the Amazon 
and the Orinoco Rivers in South America. It is 
about eight feet long and is nearly all tail. On 
each side of this strange fish there is a sort of 
electric battery and if the eel can touch its enemy 
with its head and tail and so make a complete 
contact, as we say, it can produce such an electric 
shock that it can kill its enemy, whether it be 
fish or fowl, or creeping thing. Yes, this is a 
dangerous world. 

Safety first! Did you ever hear of the little 
white ants that belong to Africa and are hardly 
ever seen. They work in the dark. They cover 
up their work. They attack whole forests and 
no one ever sees them at work. They make their 
approach through dark tunnels and secrete them¬ 
selves and before they are ever known to be pres¬ 
ent the forest is destroyed. The missionary may 
rise from a perfectly good chair at night and sleep 
quietly and in the morning the chair will be in 
the same place and will look the same, but when 
he sits upon it, he finds himself and what is left 
of the chair in a heap on the floor. The white 
ants have come in the night and eaten all the in¬ 
side out of the legs, and seat and frame of the 
chair and left only a sort of paper shell. The 
same thing may happen to the whole house. You 


SAFETY FIRST! 


1 77 

may never see an ant but the house may one day 
fall like a house of cards. Yes, this is an unsafe 
world. 

Safety first! Take heed! Beware! Be on your 
guard! Stand fast! Be strong! Put on the whole 
armour of God! Everything carries about with 
it its weapons of war. The dog has its teeth, the 
cat its claws, the horse its heels, the cow its horns, 
the goat its head, the bee its sting, the bird its 
beak, the fox its cunning. 

In the olden days when the world was more un¬ 
safe than it is now people carried bows and ar¬ 
rows and swords and guns and dressed and slept 
in armour. Our danger is not from swords and 
guns and daggers, but from unseen enemies. Like 
the white ants, our enemies work without being 
seen, and we are told to be always on guard and 
to always wear the whole armour of God. If you 
will read the last chapter of Ephesians you will 
see what makes up a complete suit of God’s ar¬ 
mour. 

First, the girdle of truth. 

There is no safety in a lie. 

Second, the breastplate of righteousness. 

The right life is the only safe life. 

Third, the sandals of peace. 

Peace has more victories than war. 

Fourth, the shield of faith. 

“I will trust and not be afraid.” 

Fifth, the helmet of salvation. 

The Christian life is the fearless life. 


178 


SAFETY FIRST! 


Sixth, the sword of the Spirit. 

The true sword is the Word of God. 

Seventh, the habit of prayer. 

Prayer will always kill sin. 

This is the whole armour of God. It is the 
secret of safety, and he who fights in the armour 
never fails. Some day I want you to read Bun- 
yan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” where the story is 
told of one by the name of Christian who fought a 
terrible battle in this same armour and won a hand¬ 
some victory. 


“Soldiers of Christ—arise! 
And put your armour on.’ 


LI 

THE WASPS’ NEST 

’The sting is sin .”—i Cor. 15: 56 


E LFIN CAMP had been shut up during the 
long, long Canadian winter and when we 
arrived to open it for the summer, Ahmic 
Lake was dressed in loveliness and the cabin was 
already entertaining a few guests. Of course 
Oliver was there, but the guests were not of his 
inviting nor of ours. They were little creatures 
of the forest who had come out of their deep 
dark nests in the silent woods, and finding no one 
occupying the spacious rooms and verandas had 
made themselves at home. 

At first, after our coming, they were silent and 
shy and only little by little did they introduce 
themselves. First a little chipmunk made himself 
at home on a chair, and then a red squirrel winked 
and shook his tail at us from the porch railing, 
and then a field-mouse, fleet as a deer and dressed 
in white and tan, passed quietly but observantly 
across the table. They were surprised and so 
were we. In the night they held some sort of 
meeting and from what we heard they did not 
agree very well, for there was much chattering 
and prancing about. 

At breakfast next morning other and less wel- 
179 


i8o THE WASPS’ NEST 

come guests made their appearance. Breakfast 
was served on the veranda beside the silver birches 
and the evergreen pines and hemlocks, and when 
we came to eat of the good things Oliver had 
provided, lo, other guests, uninvited and unwel¬ 
come, came also. They were yellow-jackets, 
dressed in their best, with their jazz music and 
their impudence, and they came to the feast of 
sugar and plum-jelly and such other tasty things 
as took their fancy. They refused to leave. They 
claimed their rights and began to fight. One was 
killed, but two others came instead. Another 
was killed and three were left and so the battle 
went on until breakfast was over, but the wasps 
were still there with their buzzing and their sting¬ 
ing. 

What could be done? We could wait and 
kill them one by one, but perhaps there were hun¬ 
dreds, and their big lead-coloured nest was up 
in the beams right beside the breakfast table. 
But there was another way to deal with wasps. 
Our Doctor-guest waited until both the wasps 
and the children were quiet and then he took a 
little silver and glass thing he called a hypodermic, 
which he filled with chloroform. You know what 
chloroform is. It puts people to sleep. When 
the wasps were all quiet the doctor put the point 
of the hypodermic in the hole of the nest and 
gave those nasty, stinging wasps a good dose of 
chloroform and closed up the hole with a little 
cotton. There was a whirl of excitement for a 
minute, and then all was quiet and the nest was 


THE WASPS’ NEST 


181 


taken down and all the sleeping wasps were 
burned in the kitchen fire. That was the end 
of the wasps. 

I have been thinking a good deal about those 
wasps. Wasps sting. Their sting is poison. 
They bring fear and suffering and there is only 
one thing to do with them and that is to destroy 
them. It is dangerous to treat them as guests 
and permit them to play with little children. The 
best thing to do is to kill them quickly, kill them 
with a club, or a broom, or a brick, or lull them 
to sleep with the sweet breath of the doctor’s 
chloroform. 

Sin has a sting just like a wasp. 

There was a wasps’ nest in the Garden of Eden 
and one of these wasps stung Eve and then stung 
Adam and at last drove them out of the garden 
and their paradise was lost. The wasp that stung 
Adam and Eve was called Disobedience. It still 
flies around and stings and poisons the lives of 
men and women and little children. 

There was a wasps’ nest in the first home. In 
that first home were two little boys, Cain and 
Abel. They had the same father and mother, ate 
the same food, heard the same stories and looked 
at the same stars, but one day a wasp called Envy 
stung Cain and drove him mad, and in his mad¬ 
ness he rose up and killed his brother. It was that 
same poisonous wasp that stung the priests and 
the Pharisees, and in their fury they led Jesus 
to the Cross. 

There was a wasps’ nest in the first Christian 



182 


THE WASPS’ NEST 


Church. When the early Christians had gathered 
together and every one was in love with each 
other and with their Lord a man named A'nanias 
and his wife Sapphira were both stung by a wasp 
called Lying. And pain and sorrow and death 
came to that first little Christian Church. 

Think of the wasps’ nest that Paul found in 
the city of Ephesus! He names some of the 
wasps, “Idolatry, Sorcery, Enmities, Strife, Jeal¬ 
ousies, Wrath, Factions, Divisions, Parties, Envy- 
ings.” What can you do with such a dangerous 
nest as that but destroy it? And the way to 
destroy all such nests is not with chloroform and 
a hypodermic but with the sweet and living breath 
of the Spirit of God. In the presence of God’s 
love, hatred and all things evil shrivel up and die. 

Do you remember an old story in an old book, 
called the “Arabian Nights,” about an island that 
was a magnet? It was out in the ocean and a 
great ship came too close to it and the magnetic 
island drew it closer and closer, and without sound 
of hammer or bomb the great ship fell to pieces, 
for the mighty magnet had quietly drawn out 
every rivet and every bolt and strewn the wreck¬ 
age upon the sea. That of course is a fairy story, 
but it may be made a true story. Jesus is a mag¬ 
net. He is the greatest magnet in the world. He 
said, “I will draw all men unto Me.” If we 
live near Jesus He will not only draw us near 
to Him, but He will draw out from us every 
feeling of hatred, every thought of envy, every 


THE WASPS’ NEST 183 

wasp’s sting, every unkind word, and all evil 
things will die, not one by one, but altogether, 
like the hundred or more wasps in the nest that 
were so quickly and so quietly chloroformed. A 
friend visiting in the home of William Blake, the 
poet, asked for some good advice about how to 
succeed. The poet was silent for a few moments 
and then in a quiet voice said to his wife: “What 
do we do when we need help?” She replied, “We 
kneel down and pray.” To keep near to God is to 
keep near to peace and power and security. 


LII 

THE SWEETEST THING IN THE WORLD 

“Abide now at home ”—II Chronicles 25: 19 


f I ^HE sweetest thing in the world! 

What is it? I suppose you will say 
sugar. When we wish to speak of any¬ 
thing as very sweet we say “sweet as sugar/’ or 
“sweeter than honey.” Yes, and we also say 
“sweet as music,” “sweet as summer,” and noth¬ 
ing is sweeter than summer unless it be spring. 

"Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, 

A box where sweets compacted lie.” 

There are lots of sweet things in the world 
when you begin to think. We speak of a “sweet 
tooth,” a “sweetheart,” “sweet William,” who¬ 
ever he may be, and “sweet girl graduates,” who¬ 
ever they may be, but none of these sweet things 
is the sweetest thing in the world. The sweetest 
thing in the world is Home. What do you think? 
Is not “Home, Sweet Home” the sweetest thing 
you know? 

I wonder if boys and girls to-day know “Home, 
Sweet Home” ? For over a hundred years fathers 
and mothers and grandmothers have been singing 
“Home, Sweet Home.” It was written by an 
184 



SWEETEST THING IN THE WORLD 185 

American, John Howard Payne, in the month of 
May, 1823, and during May, 1923, it was sung 
on land and sea, in homes, churches, and music 
halls all over the world. For Home is the sweet¬ 
est thing in the world, and “Home, Sweet Home” 
is the sweetest song. I half believe that not one 
of you can say or sing the first verse. Suppose 
you try. 

“’Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, 

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home; 

A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there, 

Which, seek through the world, is ne’er met with else¬ 
where, 

Home, Home, sweet, sweet Home! 

There’s no place like Home! there’s no place like Home!” 

When we think of it everything in the world 
has a home. The world itself is nothing but a 
big wonderful home. It has the sky for a roof, 
the sun for light, the clouds for shade, the moun¬ 
tains for walls, the grass for a floor, the flowers 
for carpets, continents for rooms, islands for gar¬ 
dens, birds for music, winds for automobiles, for¬ 
ests for summer homes, the rain for shower baths, 
and the oceans and lakes for swimming pools, and 
in this wonderful home of nature everything that 
lives has its own home. The fish has its shady 
nook, the bird its nest, the beaver its dam, the 
wild goats their shelter, the bears their caves, the 
lions their lair, and the sheep their fold, and to 
each one home is the sweetest thing in the world. 

Nansen, the Arctic explorer, carried a pigeon 
into the far North and from that white wilderness 


186 SWEETEST THING IN THE WORLD 


it flew over ice and ocean, and at last came to its 
own home in Norway with its message of life and 
love. Our hearts, too, fly away to God, who is 
our real Home. 

What is it that makes Home so sweet ? I will 
tell you. It is love. Nothing else will do. 

“One rubber plant can never make a home, 

Not even when combined with brush and comb, 

And spoon, and fork, and knife. 

And graphophone, and wife. 

No! Something more is needed for a home. 

“One rubber plant can never make a home; 

One day did not suhice for building Rome. 

One gas-log and a cat 
Can’t civilize a flat. 

No! Something more is needed for a home.” 

That something else is love, and what is love? I 
will tell you. Love is a way of living. There 
are many ways of living. There is a worldly way, 
and a selfish way, and a thoughtless way, and then 
there is love’s way. Love’s way is to live for 
others, and it is because we live for others in our 
home that home becomes the sweetest place in the 
world. 

There is a story about an old man by the name 
of Hartmann. He was a Quaker, and his only 
son went off to war away back in the days of 
slavery. After a great battle the old man went 
to headquarters and there learned that his boy 
had not returned. The father thought he had 
been killed, but went out into the battle field. He 
looked into the faces of the dead and wounded, 


SWEETEST THING IN THE WORLD 187 

and as night came on he lighted a lantern and 
searched for his missing boy. The wind blew out 
the light, and in the darkness he went on with his 
search and as he searched he called “John Hart¬ 
mann: thy father calleth thee.” For hours he 
searched and no answer came. “John Hartmann, 
thy father calleth thee,” and then he heard a voice, 
“Here, father,” and in a little while the old man 
had his son in his arms, ministering to his needs, 
and history tells us that he nursed him back to 
life. That is what love does. 

We say that Heaven is just like Home, and I 
think if you will listen you will hear God, our 
heavenly Father, calling, and you will hear Him 
calling your names, “John, Charles, Margaret, 
Jane, thy Father is calling thee,” and as He listens 
I am sure He will hear the answer, “Here, 
Father.” 


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The Oriental Policy of the United States 

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A plea for the policy of the Open Door in China, pre¬ 
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Captain Bickel of the Inland Sea 

Illustrated, 8vo., cloth 

“Especially valuable at this hour, because it throws a 
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time a story of. great spiritual urgency and power.”— 
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A Light in the Land of Sinim 

Forty-five Years in the True Light Seminary, 
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achieved by the True Light Seminary, Canton, China. 
Mrs. Noyes has devoted practically her whole life to this 
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missionary activity in China, covering a period of more 
than forty-five years.”— Christian Work. 

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A Record of the Life and Work of Horace G. 
Underwood, D.D. Illustrated, cloth, 

“An intimate and captivating story of one who labored 
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i2mo, net $1.25. 

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The Reinicker Lectures at the Protestant Epis¬ 
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The first of a series of Handbooks presenting the pro¬ 
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---- American Section 

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